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 CONVERSATION

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 FOR THE RECORD

477 ‘I have been

‘IT FELT completely betrayed
LIKE A MILES by the DOJ lawyers’
Length of a single lightning
BULLET- bolt—the longest ever
recorded—during an April
WANDA COOPER-JONES, the mother of
Ahmaud Arbery, responding to a plea
HIT TO 2020 storm, stretching across
three U.S. states, the World
deal announced on Jan. 30 to allow
two men convicted of her son’s murder
LEARN Meteorological Organization
conirmed on Feb. 1
to avoid trial on federal hate-crime
charges; a judge later rejected the deal
THAT ONE
MORE
PRECIOUS
LIFE DIED
WITH 40
Number of Jeopardy!
COVID-19.’ games won by Amy
Schneider through
LOTAY TSHERING, Jan. 26, a streak that
Prime Minister of makes her the most
Bhutan, in a Jan. 29 successful woman
Facebook statement to have competed on
responding to the the show
country’s fourth
recorded coronavirus
death

2
WEEKS
Length of suspension
handed to The View
co-host Whoopi
‘We have
Goldberg on Feb. 1,
the day after she
JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER, seen that the
made widely
condemned actualuse
comments about the
Holocaust during a of hen has
conversation on the
daytime talk show increased
and
stabilized.’
I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y B R O W N B I R D D E S I G N F O R T I M E

‘We don’t talk about DANIEL IMS, a member

of Norway’s Language

Bruno, no, no, no.’ Council, conirming

plans for the gender-
neutral pronoun hen
CAROLINA GAITÁN, singing the opening lines of
to oficially enter the
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” which on Jan. 31 became the irst song from a Norwegian language
Disney animated movie to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart in nearly 30 years on Jan. 31, joining the
masculine han and
feminine hun
SOURCES: THE WALL STREE T JOURN AL, N PR,
6 Time February 14/February 21, 2022 VA R I E T Y, R E U T E R S , T H E G U A R D I A N
The Brief

NEW
MARKET
BY JAMES A. ANDERSON

We can’t blame stock-

market volatility on
COVID-19 anymore
S

ANTIABORTION LAWS ANTICIPATE WHY PARIS IS RECLAIMING ATHLETES LIMBER UP FOR COVID-19
A SUPREME COURT RULING ITS LONG-BURIED BIÈVRE RIVER PROTOCOLS AT BEIJING GAMES

PHOTOGR APH BY RICHARD DREW 7

THE BRIEF OPENER

he market cares less about coVID-19 markets began to take it in stride. Once that happened,

T than you think. Recent volatility in global i-

nancial markets may seem like the latest pan-
demic-induced shocks, but there are signs that
investors are growing accustomed to the idea that some
form of the virus is part of our new normal.
investors kept advancing money to organizations that
feed, provide, and continue to be proitable.”

Where does that leave us at the start of 2022? The

S&P 500 index has dipped 6% since the start of the year.
At the beginning of the pandemic, investors ixated on Observers attribute that to a short list of factors, like
the virus’s every move. They pored over data on company inlation (which has some fearing money will be vacu-
lockdowns and vaccine advancements to assess how well umed out of the stock market as the Fed raises rates and
individual companies were positioned to proit. The re- investors seek higher guaranteed returns in bonds);
sulting calculations sorted the business world into neat stocks overvalued after a long market climb in 2020
categories of winners, like Peloton, and losers, like cruise- and 2021; and the new threat of a war between Russia
ship operators. But over the past 22 months, the market’s and Ukraine. What about the Omicron variant? Market
herd mentality has evolved into a herd immunity of sorts. watchers say it ranks a distant fourth.
As a result, Wall Street’s worldview is now what inance “Each new variant has had a lesser impact on mobil-
strategists call an “endemic,” rather than “pandemic,” ity, so these trends will continue but to a smaller degree,”
mindset. says Saira Malik, Nuveen’s chief investment oicer. Even
Proof of this lies in the Chicago Board Options Ex- after Omicron cases skyrocketed, the market seems in-
change’s volatility index, known as the VIX, a wonkish clined to follow long-term historical trends—particularly
metric that professionals use by moving to undervalued
to gauge stability 30 days into sectors that have lagged,
S li d
the future. The VIX tracks the says Eley. That makes value
S&P 500’s basket of stocks and pa de c dset to a e de c o e stocks—typically companies
measures trends to estimate whose stocks trade at lower
the likelihood of bumpy metrics compared with
80 CBOE volatility
trading ahead. The higher index (VIX),
83 the broad market—more
the VIX, the more invest- weekly closes attractive.
ment managers brace for Pricing power will be im-
60
high volatility, possibly hold- portant for companies in
ing of on big trades, or hun- PRE-
PANDEMIC
PANDEMIC
YEAR 1
PANDEMIC
YEAR 2
2022, Malik points out. That
kering down for a rough ride. gives many Big Tech behe-
Lower VIX igures indicate, 40 30 moths, which have skewed
meanwhile, that trading will 21 stock market returns
be relatively in line with nor- throughout the pandemic,
mal conditions. 20
an edge; the group’s biggest
Typically, the VIX companies—Amazon, Meta,
luctuates between low Alphabet—are shielded by
volatility marks of 10 and 20, 0 services or products that are
JAN. APR. JULY OCT. JAN. APR. JULY OCT. JAN. APR. JULY OCT. JAN.
with an occasional leap. The unique in markets where
2019 2020 2021 2022
index skyrocketed on March competition is less rigorous.
16, 2020 to a record high of Materials stocks will
82.69. For context, the previous peak, of 80.74, came at the beneit not only from infrastructure spending, but
end of November 2008 during the global inancial crisis. also the use of specialty chemicals in electric car and
That said, VIX levels were back down to the 20s come semiconductor manufacturing. A couple of interesting
summer. They rose sharply as the virus surged in the fall value sectors, including banks and oil, could enjoy
of 2020, but got no higher than 40 in October 2020. And tail winds as well. (Oil prices have tended to decline
since then, the VIX had settled into levels in the teens and during COVID-19 surges.) That’s especially true given
20s until ticking up above 30 two days in December and the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates in
just over 30 in late January 2022. March. “That’s an environment that bodes well for value
In other words, following the pandemonium COVID- stocks—companies with strong balance sheets,” says
19 triggered when it irst swept the nation almost two Eley. Financial and energy sectors it that proile. And
years ago, the VIX has telegraphed signs that the market is while another sector, health care, may not have led the
gradually becoming less reactive and more rational. This market during the last two years, it could be poised for
is in line with historical trends, says institutional investor an upswing. Those companies, Eley points out, tend to
Randall Eley, head of the Edgar Lomax Company. “When be proitable and priced well.
you look at the 1918 lu, for instance, it was a shock to the “In the long term, markets are a gauge of what peo-
system when U.S. markets irst realized what was going ple–and investors—really believe,” Eley says, “instead
on,” Eley says. “Later, though the pandemic was not over, of a measure of emotional reactions.” 
The Brief is reported by Eloise Barry, Madeleine Carlisle, Alejandro de la Garza, Tara Law, Sanya Mansoor, Ciara Nugent, Billy Perrigo, and Olivia B. Waxman
 NEWS TICKER

legally take
control of voting
machines in key swing
states,

Rough seas
Italy’s Coast Guard rescues some 280 migrants, mostly Bangladeshis and Egyptians, from
a boat attempting to cross from Libya to the Italian island of Lampedusa on Jan. 25. Seven
passengers died from hypothermia. While migrant crossings on the route typically peak in
summer, more are attempting the treacherous winter journey to Europe this year, with 3,035
arriving in Italy in January—nearly triple the number for the same month in 2020 and 2021.
voted unanimously
to ban Maus

THE BULLETIN

Red states push abortion bans ahead of Supreme Court

As the supreme Court weighs A high- STEPPING STONES Supporters of a 15-week
proile case that could unwind Roe v. Wade, ban argue it strikes a balance between more
lawmakers across the U.S. are introducing extreme measures—like the Texas law—and
a wave of new bills limiting abortion at the the status quo, in which most states allow
state level. While several states have already abortions until viability, or about 24 weeks.
introduced bills mimicking Texas’ contro- Abortion-rights advocates say the 15-week
versial ban on abortions after six weeks, bills are no compromise; they cut access
at least three more—Florida, Arizona, and and open the door to further bans. “[Their]
West Virginia—are considering bills similar goal is to eliminate access to abortion en-
to Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, the tirely,” says Julie Rikelman, litigation direc-
law at the center of the Supreme Court case. tor at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

won an HOLDING COURT State legislatures consider ‘DOMINO EFFECT’ These bans would re-
lots of bills aimed at curtailing abortion shape abortion access across the South,
P R E V I O U S S P R E A D : A P ; T H I S PA G E : PA U D E L A C A L L E — A P

absolute majority of
parliamentary seats every year. But GOP lawmakers introducing and particularly in rural, low-income com-
15-week bans this term say they are doing munities. Many people who want an abor-
so speciically in light of the pending Su- tion already must delay it to raise money,
preme Court decision. The bills directly vi- take time of work, and arrange childcare or
olate the so-called viability standard set by transportation. If a state bans abortion after
Roe v. Wade, which states that women have 15 weeks, many would have to travel else-
the constitutional right to end pregnancies where, potentially overwhelming facilities
until the fetus is viable; their proponents in nearby states. “The more states curtail
are betting that the Supreme Court’s ruling, access to abortion, the harder it becomes
which is expected before the end of June, for people in the entire region to access it,”
will allow Mississippi’s ban to stand. Rikelman says. —AbigAil AbrAms
9
THE BRIEF NEWS

GOOD QUESTION

Why is Paris uncovering NEWS TICKER

a river it buried a century ago?

in 1899, a wriTer for The french surrounding areas because as water
newspaper Le Figaro surveyed the damage particles absorb heat from the air and
Parisians had done to the Bièvre. For cen- then evaporate, they carry the heat away
turies, the 13-ft.-wide river had snaked up with them, lowering the ground-level overthrew President
through southern Paris, joining the Seine in temperature. They can also mitigate loods Roch Kabore
the city center. But as the Industrial Revo- by giving excess rainwater somewhere to
lution took of, tanneries and dyers had se- go, and make cities a more pleasant place
verely polluted its waters. “It lows slowly, to live.
oily, and black,” the writer noted, “streaked With that in mind, Mayor Anne Hidalgo
with acids, dotted with soapy and putrid agreed to a proposal for the “rebirth of the
pustules.” Bièvre” by Paris’ Green Party as part of a
Authorities opted to close the river, seal- 2021 coalition deal. A feasibility study is
ing up the last section in 1912. Its waters under way, and Lert expects to complete
no longer even run the irst Parisian
under Paris, hav- section by 2026,
ing been cut of at at a cost of around
towns closer to its $16 million. It
source, 13 miles will join several
southwest of the stretches of the
city. Bièvre recently
Today, though, uncovered in
the Bièvre has smaller towns to the
an unlikely ally: south, including the
climate change. suburb of Arcueil,
The same industrial which will open a clinical trial of an
activity that section in spring experimental HIV vac-
destroyed the river 2022. At that point, cine,
has helped drive the Bièvre’s waters
global warming, will begin running
with Paris’ average through pipes
temperature under Paris to reach
already 4.1°F the Seine again.
(2.3°C) higher than The Bièvre isn’t
in the preindustrial the only urban river
era. The urban heat-island efect, in which to get a new chance at life in the climate-
buildings and pavements absorb more heat change era. Last May, Manchester in the U.K.
than vegetation and water do, is making uncovered a downtown section of the River
matters worse, driving Paris’ temperature Medlock, which it had buried 50 years ago.
up by as much as 14.4°F (8°C) more than And authorities in New York City are study-
nearby rural areas during heat waves. By ing a $130 million plan to reopen the Bronx’s
the mid–21st century, according to local- Tibbetts Brook to reduce lood risks.
government estimates, Paris could have The trend represents a reversal
a climate resembling that of Seville in among urban leaders, who once saw
southern Spain. limiting nature’s footprint as crucial to
“We have to adapt Paris to the future, development, says Snigdha Garg, head intermediate-
and yet this is one of the most densely of adaptation research at the climate- range missile capable
populated cities in the world, with lots leadership group C40. “We are seeing that of reaching the U.S.
of heritage restrictions, so we are limited it’s moving away from nature—whether territory of Guam—
in what we can do,” says Dan Lert, Paris’ that’s the true course of a river or where
deputy mayor for climate, water, and trees should be—that is causing many
energy. “La Bièvre is one of the great tools of our problems,” Garg says. “And now,
that we have.” gradually, cities are learning to live with
Bodies of water help to cool their nature.” —ciara nugenT
10 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 NATION

An immigration
quagmire mires
Afghan refugees
BY JASMINE AGUILERA

AhmAd NAeem WAkili escAped

Afghanistan in mid-August, after the
government collapsed and the Tali-
ban took Kabul. A former judge who
had earned the Taliban’s ire, Wakili
was granted refuge in the U.S. by
the American government under an
ad hoc program called humanitarian
parole. Wakili now lives in Tucson,
Ariz., where he dreams of reuniting
with his family, who remain in Turkey.
But over the past few months, U.S.
immigration oicials have twice re-
jected his wife and 2-year-old daugh-
ter’s humanitarian-parole applica- (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), a refugee-
tions. Although the rejection letters resettlement agency.
cite a problem with the fees that But if the decision to direct Afghans to humanitar-
Wakili attempted to pay—a total of ian parole was made with good intentions, it has become
$1,150—U.S. Citizenship and Immi- precisely the bureaucratic quagmire that oicials hoped
gration Services (USCIS) provided to avoid. In the months after the U.S. military pulled
him with no further explanation. out of Afghanistan, humanitarian-parole applications
Wakili’s story is not unique. His soared. In a typical year, USCIS receives fewer than 2,000
family are among tens of thousands humanitarian-parole applications and approves from 500
of Afghan nationals marooned in im- to 700. Since July 2021, the agency has received more
migration bureaucracy amid programs than 40,000 applications. The vast majority of these ap-
that are understafed, underfunded, plications have yet to be fully processed; as of Jan. 12, the
and simply ill-equipped to serve Af- agency had “conditionally approved” roughly 145 and re-
ghans in need. Their struggle illus- jected 560, per the USCIS.
trates the broader systemic failures of
the U.S. immigration system. △ ReseaRcheRs and advocates question why Biden of-
This particular dilemma arose Afghan refugees icials decided to direct Afghans toward humanitarian
last summer, when top oicials at the wait to be parole, rather than directing resources back into USRAP.
White House and the Department of processed at “It is bizarre to me that the Biden Administration didn’t
Homeland Security (DHS), search- a repatriation use the Afghan evacuation as an opportunity to kick
ing for ways to help Afghan nation- center in Van, the refugee-resettlement program into gear,” says Yael
als seeking refuge in the U.S., decided Turkey, on Schacher, deputy director for the Americas and Europe at
Sept. 28
to direct them to apply for humani- Refugees International, a refugee advocacy organization.
tarian parole. The idea was that this Unlike refugee status, humanitarian parole does not
little-used pathway would help avoid confer immediate work authorization, access to health
the months-long wait times typical care, or a path to permanent residency, nor does it facili-
of more traditional channels like the tate the family-reuniication process. Also, because hu-
U.S. Refugee Admissions Program manitarian parole is determined on an ad hoc basis, it
(USRAP), which was gutted by former often isn’t clear what is required for an application to be
C H R I S M C G R AT H — G E T T Y I M A G E S

President Trump. approved.

“The Biden Administration inher- “Humanitarian parole is not intended to replace estab-
ited a very broken, underresourced, lished refugee processing channels,” a USCIS spokesper-
overburdened, and overcomplicated son says. Neither DHS nor the State Department would
program, and humanitarian parole comment on the humanitarian-parole program. Mean-
was the easy way out,” says Mark Het- while, Wakili says, he feels numb. “I don’t care if they don’t
ield, president and CEO of HIAS give me asylum,” he says. “But I need my family here.” 
11
THE BRIEF NEWS

across the Great Plains to engulf a

V I R A L Canadian equipment salesman also

named Josh Wardle. “I think if I was
actually the creator,” the other Wardle
observed to one reporter, “I’d be quite
exhausted.”

W O R D S This Wardle was. “My inbox is de-

stroyed,” Wardle says slowly.
He grew up on an organic farm in
Wales, came to the States for an MFA

C R A Z E in digital art, then found jobs in Silicon

Valley. Working at Reddit, he created a
couple of projects that doubled as case
studies in a question that lately preoc-
cupies much of the world: How does
E A R N S the design of a site steer the behavior of
the people coming to it?

Wordle provides one ansWer. It

M A J O R was fashioned for an audience of one:

his partner, Palak Shah, who likes word
games. It went out into the larger world
almost as a whim, without any of the
things that could generate money, no
M O N E Y ads or push notiications. You can play
only once a day, and that play beneits
only you. Far from producing income,
the game (at least until Jan. 31) was ac-
How the creator of tually costing Wardle roughly $100 a
Wordle really feels about month to keep it online. He seemed ine
selling his addictive game with that. And that seemed the most in-
teresting aspect of what he was doing.
BY KARL VICK
“That was never the goal, really, to
A couple of hours AfTer The New York Times AN- make money,” he said. “The goal was
nounced on Jan. 31 that it had acquired the online word to make a game that my partner would
game known as Wordle, its inventor was still looking for enjoy playing. What’s interesting is,
the right word—this time, for his emotions. people ask me all the time about the
“My biggest sense, actually, right now, isn’t joy. It’s re- monetization stuf. Like, ‘You could put
lief,” Josh Wardle, who was paid a reported “low seven ads on it; you could do premium.’ And
igures” for the daily puzzle, told me. It was our second I don’t know, maybe I’m an idiot. None
conversation in as many days. of that really appeals to me. I think be-
The day before, he’d betrayed no hint of any im-
‘My biggest cause I started with the intention of
pending windfall. In fact, much of the conversation was sense, not doing it, it’s been easy to say no. If
about how Wordle—a simple game that gives a player six actually, I’d been trying to make a viral game, I
chances to guess a ive-letter word—demonstrated that think it would be very diferent.”
the internet could be about something other than money. right now, Games like that are all over the web,
“I made something,” he explained, “that I would like to isn’t joy. now thick with knockofs. Wordle has
exist on the internet.” It’s relief.’ existed in a diferent space, one gener-
Other people liked it too. On Nov. 1, 2021, 90 peo- ated by the delight of the people play-
JOSH WARDLE
ple played Wordle. By the end of December, there were ing it. And for a game played by one
300,000 players a day. During the month of January, the person, it has encouraged a fair amount
number swelled beyond 10 million, the kind of accelera- of community, which is the part War-
tion that creates its own weather. The opening sketch of dle says has moved him. It was a player
the Jan. 22 Saturday Night Live featured an imperson- in New Zealand who came up with a
ation of former President Donald Trump playing Wordle. way of sharing how well you did with-
But when we met, Wardle had not wanted his photo out revealing the target word. Wardle
taken and was clearly worn down by the attention thanked her, turned it into a bit of code,
tsunami—which, a few days earlier, had even swept and passed it on.
12 Time February 14/February 22, 2022
 The game didn’t even have an app. SPORTS
When people searched for one, they NEWS TICKER What happens if an
found a diferent game with the same
name. Rather than pocketing the result-
athlete tests positive
ing money, that game’s creator ofered for COVID-19 at the
it to Wardle, who didn’t feel right about Beijing Olympics?
taking it either. Together, they decided
it should go to Boost!, a West Oakland, Becoming an olympian is a long and
Calif., tutoring nonproit where Shah unpredictable journey rife with hurdles.
had volunteered. But those in Beijing for the 2022 Winter
Now, escaping the juggernaut, War- 12,000 barrels Games face yet another daunting chal-
of oil to leak from into
dle has surrendered his invention to the the ocean lenge: COVID-19.
commercial side of the web. He speaks Hanging over every athlete is the spec-
respectfully of the Times’ puzzles, and ter of testing positive, beginning with a
said the company will keep Wordle in deep nasopharyngeal swab at the airport.
front of its paywall. The Times, how- All athletes are required to be vaccinated,
ever, added the word initially to that or receive a medical exemption and com-
promise. (Currently, its Games pack- ply with a 21-day quarantine if they are
age counts 1 million paying subscrib- not. Still, with the Omicron variant so
ers.) Meanwhile, Wardle is free to re- widespread and adept at sparking new
turn to the other internet, the edges infections, breakthrough infections are
of which glimmer from his homepage possible even among the vaccinated.
and Twitter feed. It seems lighter and Beijing oicials have created a closed-
more airy than the one where we spend loop system to adhere to the Chinese gov-
so much of our lives. Cartoon people ernment’s dynamic zero-COVID policy,
frolic, and artists invent games for their which relies on regular testing to detect
sweethearts. infections and rigid isolation require-
At times, however, one web touches ments to prevent spread of cases. But
the other. The day before the sale, War- all current testing positive isn’t athletes’ only worry:
prisoners on its death
dle relected on a web-art project called row to other prisons, they could also be considered a close con-
Place that he built at Reddit. Users took tact of someone with a positive test.
turns illing a blank canvas one pixel at Athletes identiied as a close contact
a time. The irst image was bathroom can continue to compete, but must take
graiti, and Wardle despaired: “A small extra steps for 14 days: wear a mask,
group of toxic people can ruin the ex- quarantine in a single room, arrange for
perience for the many.” Then he real- dedicated Olympic vehicles in which
ized people arriving at Place were being they are the only passenger, eat alone ei-
shown only what had already been ther in the room or at a separate table in
added. He tweaked the code to bring dining facilities, and avoid interacting
newcomers to a stretch of virgin can- with others. Most important, they can’t
vas, to start fresh. And they did. Three train indoors, and their national Olym-
days later, after a million people placed pic federation must make arrangements
16 million tiles, Place ended up as a to set up separate training facilities and
striking mosaic. times. —alice paRK
“I think it maybe challenged them to
think about what they would like to cre-
characterize
ate, right? It wasn’t just, ‘Add to the irst Israel’s treatment
thing that was there,’ ” he says. “I’m wary of Palestinians as
of trying to extrapolate that out to make apartheid,
a statement about what tech companies
should or shouldn’t be doing, right? It
was an art project on the internet. But
O LY M P I C S : J A E C . H O N G — A P

I think for me personally, it was really

useful to think about what responsibil-
ity you have when you create a space for
people to interact. You actually make a
ton of decisions that impact the way that An Olympic credential validation
they interact with one another.”  desk at a Beijing airport on Jan. 24
13
THE BRIEF NEWS MILESTONES

Q&A DIED
What has been your darkest
Dr. Francis Collins hour? The resistance of more
than 50 million Americans to take
looks back on advantage of lifesaving, safe, and
13 years at the NIH efective vaccines. Estimates are
more than 100,000 people have
BEFORE HE STEPPED DOWN ON died because of misinformation.
Dec. 19, Dr. Francis Collins was That’s about as dark as it gets.
the longest-serving director of
the National Institutes of Health Many of the people who dis-
since Presidents began to appoint trust the vaccine also call them-
them. He is that rare bureaucrat selves Christians. Why do you
who is also a career scientist, think that is? I identify as a white
and that rare scientist who is a evangelical Christian, and that is
devout Christian. He spoke with the very group where the vaccine
TIME about what’s next for the hesitancy is highest. I don’t want
country’s public-health eforts. to blame any of those people who
have been somehow seduced by
TIME: Polls suggest that a ma- misinformation into a position
jority of Americans believe that that is not good for them. I blame
the information the people who are
coming from pub- ‘More than spreading the misin-
lic-health officials formation, especially
is confusing. Why 100,000 people those who know
do you think it’s have died it’s not true and are
been a mess? because of doing so anyway.
COLLINS: The
most signiicant misinformation.’ Who’s that? Do you
[reason] is that the —DR. FRANCIS COLLINS think Rand Paul
science is changing. knows it’s not true?
You wouldn’t complain to your Good question. Does Rand Paul
stockbrokers if they gave you a know that what he’s spreading
diferent recommendation about around, while it might be good
a stock from two weeks ago; you’d for his political career and fund-
N H AT H A N H : D A N A G L U C K S T E I N — M P T V/R E U T E R S; M U G L E R: P I E R R E B O U L AT— A S S O C I AT I O N P I E R R E E T A L E X A N D R A B O U L AT/

say, “Oh, this person is really on raising, is actually untrue? People

R E D U X ; B R A DY: TO M P E N N I N G TO N — G E T T Y I M A G E S; W I L L O W: E R I N S C O T T—T H E W H I T E H O U S E /H A N D O U T/R E U T E R S

top of what’s happening.” But I are pretty good, I guess, at fool-

will say there have been instances ing themselves. I do think elected
where the communication has not public oicials have a responsibil-
been ideal. ity when they’re putting out infor-
mation to know whether it’s true
Indeed, you have drawn a lot or not. You almost feel like politi-
of criticism, with major media cal parties want public-health ef-
outlets saying that you shut forts to fail if they’re being pro-
down debate and censored ap- duced by their enemies.
proaches other than the official
one. How do you respond? I will A lot of science graduates are
not apologize for saying [a dan- going into tech or inance be-
gerous public-health proposal] cause it’s more lucrative. Are
needs to be addressed. Maybe you worried about a brain drain
DIED RENAMED
I could have used a better word from medicine? I’m not worried
than taken down or whatever in so far. I think it should be clear to
my emails. I was not expecting people that biomedical research is
that they would become a topic of on an incredibly steep exponen-
[Senator] Rand Paul’s latest hear- tial curve of discovery and appli-
ing. It was my job as the leader of cation. This is the best time in the
the world’s largest supporter of history of the planet to be part of
biomedical research to call [ter- this adventure.
rible ideas] out. —BELINDA LUSCOMBE
14 TIME February 14/February 21, 2022
 RETIRED

DIED

ADOPTED REPORTED STEPPED DOWN RESIGNED WARNED

SWORN IN

15
THE BRIEF NATION

POLITICS

The antivax movement

is taking over the right
BY VERA BERGENGRUEN/WASHINGTON

Lee Haywood got tHe CoVId-19 VaCCIne. He’s seen

friends lose their lives to the virus and watched others strug-
gle to recover. A longtime smoker, he believes the medical evi-
dence showing that the shot sharply reduces the chances of a
severe infection. Yet on the frigid afternoon of Jan. 23, Hay-
wood was near the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washing-
ton, standing among signs that read VaCCInes kILL and stop
tHe VaCCIne HoLoCaust.
“I’m against the forced vaccinations or forced wearing of
these masks by these bureaucrats deep in the bowels of the
government,” says Haywood, a 61-year-old Republican run-
ning for a North Carolina congressional seat. “These mandates
just slap everybody in the face.”
Haywood’s presence at the “Defeat the Mandates” rally il-
lustrated how the antivaccine movement is uniting groups
across the right. Once a fringe cohort, it has repositioned itself
as an opponent of mandates and government overreach. The
distinction has attracted legions of new supporters by tap-
ping into the anger, exhaustion, and frustration of millions of
Americans as the pandemic drags on.
At the D.C. demonstration,
right-wing conspiracy theorists ington, and swapped advice on which
‘You’re either and vaccine skeptics mingled with restaurants and hotels wouldn’t re-
with this libertarians, critics of “Big Pharma,”
and conservative politicians like
quire proof of vaccination.
The growing U.S. antivaccine
movement Haywood. Clusters of teachers and movement is part of a global efort.
or against it.’ nurses stood alongside ireighters The Washington rally featured speak-
and church groups. The yellow ers from Israel and the U.K., who fre-
—ADDIE JOHNSON,
RALLYGOER FROM VIRGINIA Gadsden lags adopted by the Tea quently referenced lockdown mea-
Party more than a decade ago mixed sures abroad. Photos and videos of
with trump 2020 placards and the event were widely shared in large
stop tHe steaL signs. Men wearing the insignia of the far- international antivaccine and far-
right Proud Boys lingered on the edges of the crowd, near a right Telegram groups. The D.C. dem-
group of women wearing lower crowns and snapping selies onstration was scheduled to coincide
with a mama Bears agaInst mandates board. with global antivaccine protests or-
For this motley cross section of the right, the issue has be- ganized by a far-right German group,
come a deining marker of political identity. “There’s no going under the banner “World Wide Rally
back now,” says Addie Johnson, 43, who drove in from Virginia for Freedom.” It was a relection of
and says she has lost friends and family relationships in the how the opposition to mandates, like
past year over her antivaccination stance. “You’re either with other right-wing movements, has
this movement or against it.” crossed borders in recent years.
On stage, a host of antivaccine ce-
The coordinaTion in the days before the rally illustrated lebrities, from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
the reach of the antimandate message. The event was pro- to right-wing doctors promoting al-
moted on Joe Rogan’s podcast, the most popular show on ternative COVID-19 treatments, com-
Spotify, as well as on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s pared U.S. vaccination policies to Nazi
War Room podcast. Calls between organizers and attendees Germany and the Soviet Union. Phy-
on the social audio app Clubhouse often stretched on for sev- sicians in white coats falsely claimed
eral hours. Supporters shared information on Facebook and that vaccines are “not working.”
Telegram, ofered to pay for one another’s bus tickets to Wash- The overarching goal is “to
16 February 14/February 21, 2022
 the tradition of the civil rights movement, complete with peace
signs and tambourines. Yet experts warn that the growth of the
joint antivaccine and antimandate movements could also pro-
vide cover to darker forces. In the context of the Capitol riot and
the rising number of threats leveled against public oicials na-
tionwide, the calls to action at the “Defeat the Mandates” rally
included some disturbing warning notes.
Some of the speakers at the rally threatened the press.
Others inveighed against Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe
Biden’s chief medical adviser, invoking the Nuremberg trials
of leading Nazis. Leaning against a tree, a woman in a pink
headband and sunglasses held a sign declaring in bold black
and red letters: Shoot thoSe who try to kidnap and
vaccinate your child.

Organizers are trying to funnel the movement’s grow-

ing number of adherents toward the political process. They
directed supporters to contact their members of Congress and
local government oicials. Each of the three dozen rallygoers
who spoke to TIME said the issue would be their top priority
when they next go to the polls.
Already, opposition to vaccine and mask mandates has be-
come a purity test for Republican oicials. Just 26% of Repub-
licans say they consider vaccine mandates acceptable, accord-
ing to a poll conducted by CNN in December, compared with
82% of Democrats. This partisan divide is evident in the vac-
cination data itself: unvaccinated adults are three times more
likely to lean Republican than Democrat, according to an anal-
ysis last November by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
create a populist movement through Last summer, nearly half of House Republicans refused to
the propagation of disinformation say whether they had been vaccinated when asked by CNN. In
and to undermine well-respected Georgia, neither of the Republican front runners for the U.S.
American institutions,” says Nick Senate nomination will say whether they received the vac-
Sawyer, an emergency-room physician cine. In January, a GOP city council member in New York City
who runs the group No License for refused to disclose her vaccination status, even though doing
Disinformation, which advocates so barred her from entering the chamber. The opposition to
for state medical boards to revoke mask and vaccine mandates has become so powerful with
the licenses of doctors who spread many Republicans that some of the rallygoers expressed frus-
disinformation and prescribe tration toward Trump, who has acknowledged receiving his
unproven treatments. This “anti- △ COVID-19 booster.
science, antigovernment movement” Attendees The movement’s “us vs. them” language has the potential
is taking advantage of a fringe group of listen to to make it a powerful political force, says Renee DiResta, who
doctors’ medical credentials to amplify speakers leads research on antivaccine disinformation at the Stanford
and legitimize a harmful agenda, during the Internet Observatory. DiResta predicts a push to sink candi-
Sawyer says. Jan. 23 dates who don’t malign vaccine mandates in upcoming GOP
The shadow of the Jan. 6, 2021, “Defeat the primaries. “That is the strategy I think we’ll see in 2022,” she
protest—which culminated in the at- Mandates” says. Meanwhile, by uniting under an antimandate umbrella,
rally
tack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of those who are antivaccine or espouse extremist views may be
Trump supporters—lingered over the able to evade moderation by social media platforms, DiResta
“Defeat the Mandates” rally. “Unfor- says. “The ‘vaccines are tyrannical government overreach’ ar-
tunately, many people who wanted to gument is still a permissible one that can be made, because
come were scared to join because of [social media companies] don’t want to look like they’re put-
it being so close to Jan. 6,” says Kait- ting their thumb on the scale of a political issue.”
lin Derstine, who organized a bus to Haywood, the Republican candidate for the U.S. House of
Washington from Pennsylvania, illed Representatives from North Carolina, says standing up against
with nearly 50 people from a conser- vaccine mandates will be a key part of his campaign platform.
vative parents’ group. “It’s about taking a stand against the government,” he says.
Rally organizers cast the event in “They need to be routed out and brought to justice.” □
17
 LIGHTBOX

Comeback champ
Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal reacts after smashing
records on Jan. 30 as he beat Russia’s Daniil Medvedev
in the inal of the Australian Open, his 21st Grand Slam
singles title. The 35-year-old rallied from two sets down to
defeat Medvedev, who had been seeded above him, in the
second longest Grand Slam inal ever. In the absence of
archrival Novak Djokovic, who was deported from Australia
on Jan. 16 in a row over his COVID-19 vaccination status,
Nadal’s victory marks a new record in men’s tennis history.

Photograph by Loren Elliott—Reuters

▶ For more of our best photography, visit time.com/lightbox
MEDIA

SPOTIFY’S
BIG PROBLEM
BY JOANNE LIPMAN

INSIDE

BORIS JOHNSON STRUGGLES LAB-GROWN MEAT THAT THE NEXT STEP IN ANTIRACISM
TO KEEP POWER IN THE U.K. TASTES LIKE THE REAL THING FOR WHITE PEOPLE

21
THE VIEW OPENER

But despite these moves, Spotify media company, which is responsible The current controversy was kicked
CEO Daniel Ek also suggested this for the content it publishes. The of a few weeks ago when more than
issue is about free speech. He stressed answer has implications not just 250 scientists and health care profes-
that Spotify doesn’t want to become for Spotify but also for other digital sionals wrote an open letter about
a “content censor” and that he is platforms that have begun paying Rogan’s podcast “promoting baseless
committed to “supporting creator some content creators, including conspiracy theories.” They were espe-
expression.” Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok. cially alarmed by a December podcast
That’s where his trouble starts. He in which Dr. Robert Malone declared
is hiding behind the same argument From my vantage point, the an- that people who trust vaccines are vic-
that platforms like Facebook and swer seems pretty clear. When you tims of “mass formation psychosis.”
Google make—that Spotify is a pay to acquire content, “you’re it.” Soon, rock star Neil Young pulled his
platform that distributes content You don’t get to have it both ways: you music from Spotify, quickly followed
created by others, but isn’t really can’t both own it—and proit from it as by other musicians.
responsible for that content. That’s Spotify does—yet not take responsi- Scrambling to undo the dam-
a dubious proposition for Facebook bility for it. This isn’t a First Amend- age, Rogan took to Instagram to say,
and Google—and it’s completely ment issue. I’m as ierce a defender “If I pissed you of, I’m sorry,” and
nonsensical when it comes to Spotify. as you will ind of freedom of speech. to promise he would try to “bal-
Spotify isn’t some sort ance things out” with
of neutral conduit. It isn’t “more experts with dif-
just a tool that podcasters fering opinions.” Spotify
use to upload their work. CEO Ek, meanwhile, put
It’s a publisher. It makes out his blog post, but con-
intentional choices about spicuously didn’t mention
the content it disseminates, Rogan, suggesting there
especially when it comes won’t be any repercussions
to Rogan. It is a crucial for the podcaster.
distinction. Spotify But even if this con-
paid Rogan a reported troversy dies down, it has
$100 million for exclusive already called attention
rights to his podcast. He to the other potentially
is the streaming service’s problematic content Spo-
biggest star, its calling tify carries. Anyone can
card, its billboard name. add a podcast to Spotify;
Rogan is Spotify. There’s no the company says it has
daylight between the two. Podcast host Joe Rogan at UFC 262 3.2 million of them.
For Spotify to maintain at Houston’s Toyota Center on May 15 That’s where the real
that it’s not responsible for lasting legacy of this afair
what comes out of his mouth, or that This isn’t a free-speech issue. may play out. Spotify says it bans any
somehow it’s too diicult to moderate Rogan and his guests have the right content that “incites violence or ha-
its content, is ludicrous. to believe and say anything they’d tred” toward any person or group. Yet
I’ve spent my career in publish- like, without fear of government re- New Statesman writer Will Dunn, in
ing, including as editor in chief prisal. But the Constitution doesn’t a search of the site, easily found pod-
of USA Today. Anybody in my ield give them the right to spout misinfor- casts that celebrate white nationalism,
would be out of a job if we know- mation on any platform they choose. Nazism, racism, and homophobia, and
ingly published nonsense and then Spotify, as a private company, gets to that encourage vaccine hesitancy and
disavowed any responsibility for it. make its own rules, to make choices climate-change denial.
L O U I S G R A S S E — P X I M A G E S/ I C O N S P O R T S W I R E /G E T T Y I M A G E S

We would be liable if we intentionally about what it allows and doesn’t on its Rogan may be the most visible
published false information. When own air. What it doesn’t get to do is set purveyor of misinformation. But
sources pushed falsehoods, our re- rules and then pretend it isn’t respon- what’s disturbing is there’s a lot
sponsibility was to challenge them sible for enforcing them. more where he came from. It’s time
and to report the facts—not to hand Ek’s suggestion that moderating for Spotify to wake up and take
them the microphone and turn up the content would make Spotify a “censor” responsibility, and inally act like
volume. is especially egregious. It’s a straw-man the publisher it already is.
Spotify is in a similar position. The argument: nobody’s asking Spotify to
Rogan episode has thrown into high be a censor, not even its harshest crit- Lipman is the author of That’s What
relief the question of whether it’s a ics. They’re simply asking it to publish She Said: What Men Need to Know
“platform” that simply allows creators standards and uphold them. That’s not (And Women Need to Tell Them)
to spread content, or whether it is a “censorship.” It’s fact checking. About Working Together
22 The View is reported by Eloise Barry, Leslie Dickstein, Mariah Espada, and Simmone Shah
If you think oxygen therapy means slowing down,
it’s time for a welcome breath of fresh air.
THE VIEW

SOCIETY
THE RISK REPORT BY IAN BREMMER WHY YOU NEED
A KINDNESS LOG
BY YOHANCA DELGADO

As an easily distracted person,

I have always found comfort
in lists. Lists of errands to
run, emails to return, books to
read. In the early months of the
pandemic, alone and away from
my family, with little to anchor
myself to, I began to list the
ways in which other people
had helped make space for my
writing career. I wrote down my
parents, who, no matter how
inancially stretched they were,
never denied me a book.
A mentor who put his faith in me.
A friend who came over with wine,
a marked-up copy of one of my
stories, and a list of questions
about how it came together.
Whenever I think of
someone who’s supported my
writing, in a big or small way,
Opposition, I put them on the list. The work
media, and of logging acts of kindness
reminds me of what’s gotten me
rivals in this far, and of what’s possible
his own to do for others. And although
it’s a practice I started to keep
party are me motivated as a writer, I
plotting his believe it’s one that could be
useful to anyone who needs a
downfall boost these days. Which is to
say, most of us.
The idea of a gratitude
practice is neither uniquely
mine nor particularly new. But
that’s the point, really, to ind
sustenance in what has always
been true. Nothing in this brief
life is promised but this one
irrefutable truth: there are good
people out there who mean you
well, and who show up in these
moments of everyday kindness.
The work of living and writing
is easier when I remember that
bounty. I write alone, but when
I think of the number of people
who have fed and protected
my lame, it burns brighter and
brighter.

Delgado is a Wallace Stegner

fellow at Stanford University
and a National Endowment
for the Arts recipient
24 TIME February 14/February 21, 2022
 the test without the deep frying and
Climate Is Everything sauces that are usually used to mask
By Aryn Baker a lack of lavor. Still, sample B had less
lavor, so Ansky reasoned that it had
SENIOR CORRESPONDENT
to be the one grown in a sterile lab.
She was so convinced of her decision
RENOWNED ISRAELI GASTRONOME been inching closer to a product that that when SuperMeat founder Ido
Michal Ansky is a professional taster is just as tasty and nearly as aford- Savir announced that it was in fact A
and a Master Chef judge. So when able as the real thing, but without that was cultivated, she corrected him.
she was invited to the world’s irst the climate impacts. (One new study “No,” she said. “A is the real chicken.”
public blind taste test pitting lab- found high-income countries could A day later, I spoke to Ansky about
grown, or cultivated, chicken against cut agricultural emissions by almost the tasting. “It’s one of the only times
a conventionally raised product, she two-thirds by moving away from an- in my life that I’m really happy that
was conident that she would be able imal-based foods.) But one question I was wrong.”
to tell the diference. remains: Would consumers be able
Surrounded by cameras and to tell the diference, and if they Sign up to learn how the week’s
perched at a restaurant bar, she could, would they still bite? Super- news connects to the climate crisis
at time.com/climate-newsletter
tasted from two dishes, labeled Meat decided to put its product to
A and B, placed in front of her. A
team of lawyers looked on, tasked
with making sure that the tasting
truly was blind. Even the chef who
sautéed the meat in sunlower oil—
no salt, no seasonings—didn’t know
which was which. Both were bland,
Ansky noted, but she would bet
her reputation that sample A was
the real thing. It had a richer, more
“chickeny” taste.
The tasting was hosted by the
Tel Aviv–based meat-tech startup
SuperMeat at its in-house restau-
rant, The Chicken. The dining tables
looked into the laboratory where the
company’s cultivated meat samples
had been grown from stem cells,
fed on a broth of nutrients. Ever
since 2013, when the irst lab-grown
hamburger was presented to the
public with a $330,000 price tag,
alternative-meat companies have Ansky does a blind taste test of lab-grown and conventional chicken

By Philip Elliott
C O U R T E S Y S U P E R M E AT

25
THE VIEW ESSAY

Antiracists can’t
work alone
BY SAVALA NOLAN

i recenTly had dinner wiTh a whiTe friend. he

mentioned completing the Me and White Supremacy
workbook—Layla F. Saad’s extraordinary tool for people
who hold white privilege and want to interrogate it. “How
was it?” I asked, sipping my wine. “Exhausting,” he pro-
claimed. And it is exhausting, the slow, painstaking, write-
it-down process of examining how racial hierarchy shows
up in one’s beliefs, desires, fears, friendships, and commu-
nities. He was doing “the work.” I was happy and, being
a person of color, relieved. I also immediately wondered
whether he’d insisted that white members of his social
circle—friends, spouse, parents, siblings—do the work too.
But I didn’t ask. I was afraid to learn that he hadn’t.
I know a lot of white people. Private elementary and high
school, an elite law school, a job in academia, a house in the
suburbs, my own family—I’m surrounded. The vast major-
ity of them are progressive and, as of late, eager to be allies.
They were sickened by George Floyd’s murder. They posted
photographs of Breonna Taylor’s face. They gave money.
They bought books from Black-owned bookstores and read Maybe these habits—the sense
them with highlighters. They were hell-bent on personal that ultimately race is someone else’s
transformation, on becoming not merely not racist but anti- problem, the belief that one is entitled
racist, not only benign but of beneit. I don’t take their will- to engage “race issues” on whatever
ingness for granted. But, very often, these white people and comfortable terms they want—inform
their eforts disappoint me, frustrate me, and leave me sad. why so many white people seem to
That’s because their work—as earnest and crucial as “do the work” alone, separate from
it is—frequently fails to demand the participation of the their closest loved ones. It gives them
white people with whom they have the tightest, most hon- a feeling of participation on the right
est, most intimate relationships. Their husbands, their side of history, of having their grip on
parents, their wives, their children, their best friends. The the moral arc, without actually requir-
people with whom their (unconsciously racialized) desires, ing them to rock their most signiicant
fears, beliefs, choices, and preferences actually play out. boat—the one packed with family
Time and again, I’ve observed white people approach “the and friends. To be fair, even doing the
work” with heartfelt intensity—but no clear will to spread work alone does require something.
it to the most signiicant white people in their lives. Facing the lessons in Me and White
I didn’t say this surprises me. Supremacy is, I can imagine, a hum-
I think of whiteness primarily as a collection of habits and bling, uncomfortable, relentless en-
behaviors premised on the assumption that dealing with counter with your shadow side. But
race is optional, and can be done on whatever terms suit you. how much tangible change does that
Behaving as if you are exempt from things that are “racial” encounter generate if you don’t push
is one way this manifests. Another way is the habit of doing your fellow white Americans too?
things that give you the feeling or appearance of caring Because here’s the truth: white-
about racial justice without having to pay much of a cost. I ness is not a solitary state. White-
sometimes think this explains a chunk of the white votes for ness is a system. Whiteness is a social
Barack Obama—it let some white voters feel progressive on system—as in communal, collec-
race—but didn’t require them to reckon with or personally tive, community-based, and often
sacriice anything. I also wonder if these white habits explain family-based. Whiteness is rooted in
the popularity of movies and television depicting Black relationships. Its rules and beneits
pain; they allow some white viewers to feel grief and even are built and transmitted, in ways
cry over the horrible workings of the racial hierarchy, with- subtle and overt, between white peo-
out having to do anything about that hierarchy. ple. If you want to untangle the net,
26 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 own relationship to white supremacy enough to interrogate
it, or is so undereducated that they don’t believe they have
a relationship to white supremacy worth investigating. No
one wants to peer too deeply into a loved one’s shortcom-
ings. I myself pick and choose which aspects of white su-
premacy to surface when it comes to my white friends and
family. But I have to believe that there are white people
who resist doing the work when it’s profered to them by
near strangers, but who, on hearing from a sister or son or
spouse that their failure to engage would impact a cher-
ished relationship, just might show up. So why can’t more
well-meaning white people insist and demand that their
family members join them, or face some consequence? No
risk, no reward.
I know that what I’m suggesting—asking for—is no
It’s time fun. But it is also, possibly, what’s missing. Have you ever
for white heard of interest convergence theory? It argues that Black
people’s rights advance only when that advancement is
folks to in white people’s interest. Brown v. Board of Education
increase is illustrative. According to the theory, Brown happened
because it advanced white interests too. Desegregation
the heat provided a timely answer to communist propaganda that
on one exploited U.S. hypocrisy on issues like “freedom” and
another “equality.” Eventually, however, when the interests di-
verged, Brown was hollowed out, and schools remain in-
tensely segregated. One way to make Black and white
you have to work in tandem with other interests converge long-term is to increase the cost of
white people. A white person who white complacency.
“does the work” in isolation is like a What should this cost look like? Cutting ties or the silent
pianist playing in a sealed room. They treatment isn’t realistic, nor is it proportionate, nor (gener-
hear the music, and that’s great. They ally speaking) desirable. But how about, for instance, hon-
may be personally transformed—but est, repeated conversations? How about good old-fashioned
they shouldn’t expect the world to I statements, now and again? Such as, “When you mostly
start dancing. ignore opportunities to do antiracist work, I worry that we
And what a loss! Because it’s the have a diferent set of values.” Or perhaps, “I know we’ve
very closeness of these relationships talked about this before, and you’ll make your own choices
between white family members and about how you spend your time. But when you stay out of
white friends that makes them fertile this ight, I feel surprised and confused. I know you care
ground for transformation. It’s within about justice.” We can be gracious with each other even as
these close relationships that so many we hold the line, even as we persist. And by “we,” I mean all
of the stereotypes about Black infe- of us—but I mostly mean you. White people.
riority and undesirability are sum- I don’t want to discount the work that individual, av-
moned and used, even unconsciously, erage white people are doing by themselves. There’s no
and racial hierarchy is therefore per- question that isolated personal transformation can sup-
formed, cemented, and reproduced. port small-scale, here-and-there moments of racial equity
and transcendence. But we’re far beyond the need for iso-
I’m not naIve. I get it: it is also the lated, small-scale, here-and-there moments.
closeness—the primacy—of these If we want to transform how we do race in this coun-
white relationships that makes mess- try, it’s time for white folks to increase the heat on one an-
I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y J A M E S S T E I N B E R G F O R T I M E

ing with them risky. The social pun- other. It needs to be real and sustained and, not to get too
ishment associated with asking any misty about it, rooted in love. Love for the relationship,
member of a privileged group to deal and love for something bigger. Bigger than power and
with their privilege can be harsh in- privilege, bigger than whiteness. Otherwise, I fear an una-
deed. Such a white person risks iden- bating status quo. I fear a waste of efort and goodwill. We
tifying themselves as an outlier. They can’t aford that anymore.
also risk seeing a side of loved ones
that they don’t want to see—the side Nolan is the author of Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on
that maybe doesn’t care about their Race, Gender, and the Body
27
 WORLD

THE
ROAD
TO
WAR
UKRAINE WENT AFTER PUTIN’S
FRIEND. RUSSIA READIED AN
INVASION. INSIDE THE POWER
STRUGGLE THAT BROUGHT EUROPE
TO THE BRINK
BY SIMON SHUSTER/KYIV

A member of the Ukrainian army’s

25th Airborne Brigade at the front
line in Avdiivka on Dec. 2
PHOTOGR APH BY BRENDAN HOFFMAN
WORLD

GREAT WARS
SOMETIMES
START OVER
SMALL
OFFENSES.
A murdered duke. An angered pope. nation, tied to Russia by bonds of faith,
The belief of a lonely king that his ri- family, politics, and a millennium of
vals aren’t playing fair. When histori- common history. He has spent the past
ans study why armies began gathering seven years using every tool at his dis-
in Europe during the plague of 2021, posal, including coercion and outright
their interest might turn to a teenage invasion, to preserve those ties, as the
girl, the goddaughter of Moscow’s iso- Ukrainian people increasingly turn to-
lated sovereign. ward the West. Short of war, one of the
Her name is Daria, a young Ukrainian best ways that Putin has to inluence
with a shy smile and big brown eyes. Ukraine is through Medvedchuk and
When she was born in 2004, her par- his political party. So it should not be
ents asked their friend Vladimir Putin, surprising that Russia’s military stand-
then a few years into his reign in Russia, of with the West has escalated in step
to christen her in the Orthodox tradition with the crackdown against his friend.
they all share. The girl’s father, Viktor Last February, days after the Inaugu-
Medvedchuk, has been close to Putin ration of President Joe Biden, America’s
for decades. They holiday together on allies in Kyiv decided to get tough on
the Black Sea. They conduct business. Medvedchuk. The Ukrainian govern-
They obsess over the bonds between ment started by taking his TV channels
their countries and the Western forces of the air, depriving Russia of its pro-
they see pulling them apart. paganda outlets in the country. The U.S.
“Our relationship has developed embassy in Kyiv applauded the move.
over 20 years,” Medvedchuk told me in About two weeks later, on Feb. 19,
a rare interview last spring in Kyiv, near 2021, Ukraine announced that it had
the start of the current standof between seized the assets of Medvedchuk’s fam-
Russia and the West over Ukraine. “I ily. Among the most important, it said,
don’t want to say I exploit that relation- was a pipeline that brings Russian oil to
ship, but you could say it has been part Europe, enriching Medvedchuk and his
of my political arsenal.” family—including Putin’s goddaughter,
Putin could say the same about Med- Daria—and helping to bankroll Med-
vedchuk. The leading voice for Russian vedchuk’s political party.
interests in Ukraine, Medvedchuk’s The irst inkling of Putin’s response
political party is the biggest opposi- came less than two days later, at 7 a.m.
tion force in parliament, with millions on Feb. 21. In a little-noticed state-
of supporters. Over the past year, that ment, the Russian Defense Ministry an-
party has come under attack. Medved- nounced the deployment of 3,000 para-
chuk was charged with treason in May troopers to the border with Ukraine for
and placed under house arrest in Kyiv. “large-scale exercises,” training them
Just last month, the U.S. accused him to “seize enemy structures and hold
and his allies of plotting to stage a coup them until the arrival of the main force.”
with help from the Russian military. Those soldiers were the irst in a mil-
Throughout his 21 years in power, itary buildup that has since grown to
Putin has seen Ukraine as a fraternal more than 100,000 Russian troops. In
30 Time February 14/February 21, 2022 PR E V I O US PAG ES: T H E N E W YO R K T I M ES/R ED UX ; T H ES E PAG ES, C LO CK W IS E F RO M TO P:
 Clockwise from top: Medvedchuk,
center, facing treason charges in Kyiv;
with Putin near Moscow in October
2020; on vacation with daughter Daria

their scramble to respond, the U.S. and

its allies have sent planeloads of weap-
ons to Ukraine and thousands of troops
to secure the eastern lank of the NATO
alliance.
The resulting standof has revived
the tensions of the Cold War and pushed
Europe to the brink of a major military
conlict. In trying to discern Putin’s mo-
tives, observers have raised his strategic
wish to humble the Americans, divide
the Europeans, and restore Moscow’s
inluence over the lands it controlled
before its empire crumbled in 1991. But
the roots of the crisis have been over-
looked. To understand Putin’s objec-
tives, you have to understand both his
personal and political ties to Ukraine,
as well as his long-standing aim to bring
the nation under his control. When
Medvedchuk was placed under house
arrest, the Russian leader called the at-
tack on his proxies “an absolutely obvi-
ous purge of the political ield,” one that
threatened to turn Ukraine “into Rus-
sia’s antithesis, a kind of anti-Russia.”
Few people have a clearer vantage
on Putin’s response than the alleged
coup plotter, Medvedchuk. In the year
before the crisis escalated, he met with
Putin several times at his residence near
Moscow, despite the pandemic proto-
cols that have kept the Russian leader
isolated from all but his top aides. The
question that now ills headlines around
the world—What does Putin want?—is
not a matter of conjecture for his clos-
est friend in Kyiv.

It took me a whIle to ind Medved-

chuk’s oice amid the alleys of the city
center. The address led to an old apart-
ment block near the end of a steep slope,
with no outward sign of its political sig-
niicance. Behind the unmarked door,
a handful of armed guards looked at
me in silence. One proceeded to search
my bag, demanding to know whether it
contained a knife or “any kind of shiv.”
Medvedchuk was more cordial. Dressed
in a itted blue suit, he had the look of
a Ken doll’s father—stif, tanned, and
manicured, with an angular jaw. Upon
S PU T N IK /A P; C O U R T ESY V I C TO R M EDV ED C H U K ; A L E X EI D RUZH I N I N —TA S S/G E T T Y I M AG ES 31
WORLD

entering the conference room, he strut-

ted over to a thermostat and asked, “Are Moscow
you warm enough?” FORCE
The story of his friendship with POSTURE
BELARUS
7 Yelnya
RUSSIA
Putin, he said, goes back to the early
years of Putin’s presidency. Medved- 10+ 3 Bryansk
chuk was chief of staf to Putin’s coun-
terpart in Kyiv, and they often met at of- POLAND Kursk
icial functions. At the time, Russia had Pogonovo
60 battalion Chernobyl 2
all the inluence it wanted k tactical
5
units, Lviv
Ukraine’s economy depen Kyiv
for cheap gas and cheape
12
Belgorod
leaders had no intention UKRAINE
Western alliances. Dn
iep
To strengthen their b AIRB ORNE er Luhansk
Russian leader, Medved TRANSNISTRIA
Donetsk
wife, a famous news anch ARMORED
Breakaway 3
region of Odessa
asked Putin to be the god VE HICLES
Moldova
newborn. They have sta 12+
Rostov
since. In one interview on ARTILLERY Sea of Azov
TV, Medvedchuk recall CRIMEA Russian-
doted on Daria, bringing Annexed backed
of lowers and a teddy b TANKS by Russia 11–12 separatist
in 2014 control
visited the Medvedchuk BULGARIA
in Crimea. SOURCE: INSTITUTE
Sevastopol
Their friendship only grew closer FOR THE STUDY
OF WAR, JAN. 25
200 MILES
Black Sea
320 KM
after 2014, when a revolution tore their
countries apart. Protesters built an en-
campment on Kyiv’s central square that does not want chaos and war in Ukraine their party’s chairman was Putin’s old
winter, demanding Ukrainian leaders in the long term,” says an adviser to one friend Medvedchuk.
ight corruption and integrate with the of the Ukrainian oligarchs who funded During elections held the following
West. More than two months of clashes these parties. “He wants a protector- year, Ukraine voted in a new President,
with police ended on a frigid February ate, a loyal government, like he had an actor and comedian named Volody-
morning, when security forces opened before.” Russia’s allies in Kyiv wanted myr Zelensky. His popularity derived
ire on the demonstrators, killing doz- the right to run for oice, to buy up in- from a hit sitcom called Servant of the
ens of them in the streets. dustries, and to control TV networks. People, in which he starred as a ictional
The regime collapsed the following As the Russian lawmaker Konstantin President. Three months later, Zelen-
day. Its leaders led across the border to Zatulin explained to me at the time: sky’s political party won a majority in
Russia, and as their political party fell “This would be our compromise. Rus- parliament. But Medvedchuk’s faction
apart, so did the machinery of Russian sia would have its own soloists in the came in second place, making it the big-
inluence over its neighbor. “There is no great Ukrainian choir, and they would gest opposition force in the country.
legitimate authority in Ukraine now,” sing for us.” Under that arrangement, he “Millions of citizens voted for us,” Med-
Putin fumed in a speech at the Krem- added, “We would have no need to tear vedchuk told me. “Putin gave a promise
lin that spring. “No one to talk to.” The Ukraine apart.” to protect them.”
revolution, he claimed, was nothing Medvedchuk’s TV channels worked
more than a U.S.-backed coup, and he THE U.S. WAS NOT OPEN to that kind to weaken the new government. “They
responded by ordering his troops to in- of deal, and the Obama Administration were eating into the electoral base, just
vade. After swiftly taking over Crimea, took a hard line against Russia’s opera- destroying Zelensky,” says the Presi-
Russian forces moved into the coal- tives in Kyiv. Many of them were sanc- dent’s irst national security adviser,
mining heartland of eastern Ukraine, tioned right after Russia invaded in Oleksandr Danyliuk. The networks
installing separatist puppet regimes in March 2014; Medvedchuk was at the were especially relentless in attack-
two of its biggest cities. top of the blacklist. Still, by the end of ing the government’s response to the
As Ukraine fought back in the east, 2018, the pro-Russian parties achieved COVID-19 pandemic and its failure to
its capital became a political battle- a breakthrough in Ukraine, forming an secure vaccine supplies from Western
ground. The remnants of the pro- alliance called Opposition Platform— allies. When Russia released its own
Russian establishment set out to build For Life. Backed by billionaires sym- vaccine in August 2020, Medvedchuk,
new parties in Ukraine, each vying for pathetic to Moscow, they owned three his wife, and their daughter Daria were
the old regime’s voters. “We knew Putin television networks in Ukraine. And among the irst to get it. They then lew
32 TIME February 14/February 21, 2022
 tended to see Russia as a nuisance to be
managed or ignored. “His team didn’t
care about Russia,” Jayanti told me in
Kyiv last fall, shortly before she resigned
from government. “And they didn’t
want to hear about Ukraine.” Only in
recent days, nearly a year into the cri-
sis, did Biden pick a new ambassador
to Kyiv , who has not yet been installed.
A senior U.S. oicial tells TIME that
Ukraine has always been a top priority
for the Administration: “There has been
very extensive and almost constant
focus on Ukraine from day one.” When
the Zelensky government decided to go
after Medvedchuk, the U.S. welcomed it
as part of Ukraine’s struggle to “counter
Russian malign inluence,” the oicial
said. The methods used in this strug-
gle have been novel and controversial.
Rather than working through the justice
system, Zelensky has imposed sanctions
against Ukrainian tycoons and politi-
cians, freezing their assets by decree.
This strategy, which the government
calls “de-oligarchization,” has targeted
many of Zelensky’s domestic opponents
and, in particular, their television chan-
A satellite image taken on Dec. 23 to take those channels of the air last nels. The U.S. has avoided criticizing the
shows a deployment of Russian troops February, it was not only a defensive crackdown, not wanting to “microman-
at the Opuk training ground in Crimea move, says Danyliuk, his former secu- age” what Ukraine was doing, said the
rity adviser. It was also conceived as a senior U.S. oicial. But in the case of
to Moscow to talk to Putin. It was the welcome gift to the Biden Administra- Medvedchuk, the U.S. embassy cheered
irst public meeting the Russian leader tion, which had made the ight against Zelensky on. “We support Ukraine’s ef-
had with anyone—unmasked, on cam- international corruption a pillar of its forts to protect its sovereignty and ter-
era, and without social distancing— foreign policy. As Danyliuk put it, the ritorial integrity through sanctions,” the
since the pandemic began. Their talks decision to go after Putin’s friend “was embassy said in a tweet last February,
that day resulted in a deal for Russia to calculated to it in with the U.S. agenda.” the day after the sanctions froze Med-
supply Ukraine with millions of doses of Throughout the ensuing military cri- vedchuk’s assets.
its vaccine, and to allow Ukrainian labs sis, the U.S. has had no ambassador in The party leader was furious. “This is
to produce it free of charge. Kyiv. The last one, Marie Yovanovitch, political repression,” Medvedchuk told
When Medvedchuk brought the ofer was ired in April 2019 after she ran me. “All my bank accounts are frozen. I
to Kyiv, the government rejected it. So afoul of President Trump’s campaign can’t manage my assets. I can’t even pay
did the U.S. State Department, which to extract political favors from Ukraine. my utility bills.”
accused Russia of using its vaccine as Trump wanted the Ukrainians to inves-
a tool of political inluence. But as the tigate the Biden family, and he froze mil- In aprIl, as Russian forces assembled
death toll mounted in Ukraine—and itary aid to Kyiv as a means of pressure. at the border, Zelensky traveled to the
no vaccine shipments arrived from the The resulting scandal led to Trump’s front lines to meet his troops, and in-
West—voters turned away from Zelen- irst impeachment in the House, and it vited me to come along. Military heli-
sky in droves. By the fall of 2020, his ap- left the U.S. embassy in Kyiv hollowed copters got us most of the way to the
proval ratings fell well below 40%, com- out and demoralized. trenches, but the last few hundred paces
pared with over 70% a year earlier. In “My chain of command went to sh-t,” required a hike through the mud with
some polls taken that December, Med- says Suriya Jayanti, who was then a se- a handful of soldiers and bodyguards.
M A X A R T E C H N O L O G I E S/A F P

vedchuk’s party was in the lead. nior diplomat at the embassy. “We just One of them lugged a big machine gun,
Zelensky grew especially concerned disappeared.” That did not change, she with boxes of shells latched to his belt.
about the party’s television channels, says, after Biden took oice last year. The President spent the day talking
which he condemned as messengers of His top foreign policy staf was focused to his troops, dining with them, and
Russian propaganda. When he decided on confronting China, she says, and they handing out medals. Considering the
33
WORLD

number of Russian tanks poised to in- the West, spent the next three hours an- win power peacefully—either through
vade from across the nearby border, he swering the agents’ questions. “They elections or, as Voloshyn put it, a dip-
seemed remarkably upbeat. We spent took my cell phone,” Voloshyn told me lomatic “compromise” between Rus-
the night near the garrison, and he ar- of the incident, which has not been pre- sia and the West. “There is no third op-
rived at the mess hall for breakfast in viously reported. “And they took all the tion,” he says. “Russia either gets the
a track suit, fresh from a morning jog information from my cell phone.” inluence it wants by peaceful means,
through the war zone. In a statement on Jan. 20, the U.S. or it gets it by force.”
On the light back that day, we talked government leveled an astonishing With Medvedchuk sidelined and
about Medvedchuk and his TV net- series of allegations against Voloshyn his party in retreat, the Kremlin has no
works, and whether it seemed wise in and Medvedchuk. It claimed that clear path to inluence over Ukraine
hindsight to shut them down. Zelensky they are part of an ongoing Kremlin through politics, and that raises the
made no apologies. “I consider them plot to install a puppet government temptation to use hard power, Voloshyn
devils,” the President told me. “Their in Ukraine, propped up by a Russian told me. “You have to understand,” he
narratives seek to disarm Ukraine of military occupation. “Russia has says. “There are hawks around Putin
its statehood.” As the Kyiv skyline ap- directed its intelligence services to who want this crisis. They are ready
peared through the window and the recruit current and former Ukrainian to invade. They come to him and say,
plane began to descend, Zelensky grew government oicials to prepare to take ‘Look at your Medvedchuk. Where is
upset. “Al Capone killed a lot of people, he now? Where is your peaceful solu-
but he got locked up over his taxes,” he tion? Sitting under house arrest? Should
told me. “I think these TV channels we wait until all pro-Russian forces are
killed a lot of people through the infor- arrested?’”
mation war.”
Some of his advisers, especially in Nearly 12 moNths since it began, the
the intelligence community, were less crisis in Ukraine has become far bigger
enthusiastic about the move against and more dangerous than any politi-
Medvedchuk. “At least he’s the devil we cal grudge. In early December, as over
know,” one retired spy chief told me in 100,000 Russian troops stood at the
Kyiv, agreeing to discuss the issue on border with Ukraine, Biden held a call
condition of anonymity. Since Russia with Putin to defuse the tensions. Ac-
irst started the war in 2014, Medved- cording to the White House, the Presi-
chuk has served as one of the lead ne- dent ofered to hear out all of Russia’s
gotiators in numerous rounds of peace “strategic concerns,” opening the door
talks, often winning the release of pris- to a far more sweeping set of talks. It
oners of war. “He has direct access to was a breakthrough for Putin to get a
Putin,” the spy chief told me. That kind U.S. President to engage with him on
of access is rare, he says, and it has made the future of the NATO alliance, which
Medvedchuk an efective mediator. Putin has long described as the main
Zelensky was not moved by such ar- threat to Russian security.
guments. On May 12, about a month The response from Russian diplo-
after our trip to the front lines, Ukrai- Voloshyn, whom the U.S. has mats smacked of an old negotiating
nian authorities issued an arrest warrant accused of being part of a coup tactic: start high. They demanded a
for Medvedchuk. Prosecutors alleged plot, at his Kyiv oice on Jan. 29 written guarantee from the U.S. that
that he had proited from the Russian Ukraine would never join NATO. They
occupation of Crimea, and they charged over the government of Ukraine and to also told the U.S. to withdraw its mil-
him with treason. A court ordered him to control Ukraine’s critical infrastructure itary forces from Eastern Europe, re-
remain under house arrest pending trial, with an occupying Russian force,” said treating to positions they held before
cut of from his voters and prevented the statement from the U.S. Treasury Putin took power. As the lead Russian
from attending sessions of parliament. Department, which imposed sanctions envoy put it ahead of talks in Janu-
U.S. law enforcement went after on Voloshyn and other alleged plotters. ary, “NATO needs to pack up its stuf
his allies. Oleh Voloshyn, a prominent When we spoke by phone the follow- and get back to where it was in 1997.”
member of Medvedchuk’s party, was ing day, Voloshyn had already pulled Rather than defusing the standof,
greeted by the FBI when he arrived in his money out of the bank and was pre- Biden’s overture allowed Russia to air a
Washington last July. Two agents ap- paring to leave Kyiv with his family. long list of grievances against the West,
proached him at Dulles International “Maybe Serbia,” he says of his destina- unleashing what one Kremlin insider in
Airport and asked to have a word in pri- tion. “Maybe Russia.” He told me he has Moscow described to me as “an enor-
vate, away from his wife and infant son, no intention of taking power in Ukraine mous pile of pent-up tensions.”
who were traveling with him. Voloshyn, with help from the Russian military, and As the talks progressed through
who serves as Medvedchuk’s envoy in said the aim of his party was always to January, Russians came to believe they
34 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 had the upper hand as long as they Ukrainian forces on a joint cathedral, the Kremlin issued footage
could keep up the military pressure on patrol on Jan. 9, near the border of the President alone with a priest, sol-
Ukraine. “It’s the perfect time to make with Belarus emnly holding a candle in the chapel of
some trades, to get sanctions removed, his private residence. “Very few peo-
to talk about security concerns,” says of the escalation ladder and stay there,” ple can speak to him now,” the Kremlin
the Kremlin insider, who agreed to dis- says a senior Administration oicial. insider told me. “The world inside his
cuss the negotiations on condition of Biden has begun to warn Ukraine head is only his own.”
V O L O S H Y N : M A X I M D O N DY U K F O R T I M E ; T R O O P S : T Y L E R H I C K S — T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S/ R E D U X

anonymity. “The logic is simple,” the and other allies that a Russian inva- In Kyiv, Putin’s friend is even more
source adds. “If we don’t put a lot of sion looks imminent. Over 8,500 U.S. isolated. Stripped of its main TV chan-
fear into them, we will not get to a clear troops were put on high alert in Janu- nels and beset by criminal charges,
solution, because that’s just how the ary, prepared to deploy to Eastern Eu- Medvedchuk’s party has been sink-
Western system works. It’s very hard rope alongside naval ships and war- ing in the polls. Medvedchuk remains
for them to reach a consensus on some- planes. The State Department ordered under house arrest, with a tracking de-
thing. All those moving parts, all those nonessential staf and family members vice aixed to his ankle and police of-
checks and balances, each one pulling to leave the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, it said, icers stationed outside his home. His
in diferent directions. So the aim is to out of “an abundance of caution.” daughter’s security was such a concern
present a threat of such massive conse- It is far from clear whether peace that he declined to say anything about
quences that it forces everyone on that talks can bring Europe back from the her whereabouts. But one of his associ-
side to agree.” brink of war, or what Putin might con- ates told me that Daria remains in Kyiv,
The gambit appears to be failing. The sider a face-saving compromise. Under surrounded by private security guards.
U.S. has rejected Russia’s core demands the Kremlin’s pandemic protocols, the The main concern, the associate said, is
out of hand, and prepared a raft of sanc- Russian leader has been more isolated kidnapping. “But yes, she’s still here.”
tions that would cut much of the Rus- during this crisis than at any point in his —With reporting by LesLie Dickstein
sian economy of from the rest of the career. In early January, when he would and simmone shah/new York; and
world. “The gradualism of the past is normally celebrate Orthodox Christ- Brian Bennett, w.J. hennigan, and
out, and this time we’ll start at the top mas among the crowds at a Russian nik PoPLi/washington □
35
 important interests were at stake. The
military endgame is unlikely to be the
prolonged and costly battle for territo-
rial control over Ukraine that Western
leaders keep warning Moscow about.
The crisis is not about Ukraine but
about Russia. If Washington is seri-
ous about limiting Russian power,
it should focus less on what comes
after a Russian attack than on ofer-
ing Ukraine the tools to defend itself,
especially during the initial stages of
conlict, when air and standof missile
strikes will be deployed against mili-
tary bases, power plants, key trans-
portation nodes, and other critical
infrastructure.
VIEWPOINT
We no longer live in the old liberal
Europe must learn to order where rules must be enforced
and violators punished. We live in a
stand up for itself new order where power must be bal-
BY BRUNO MAÇÃES anced with power. The U.S. must re-
lect on whether it can aford to reduce
A consensus is beginning To form ThAT A new wAr its presence in Europe before a proper
in Ukraine has become inevitable. In large measure, this is counterweight to Russia has been cre-
due to the escalation in both rhetoric and military prepared- △ ated in Brussels. As for Europeans, they
ness coming from Moscow. Combined, they create a situa- Ukrainian soldiers need to quickly prepare themselves for
tion where the costs of retreating for Russia might now be hold a building a new world, where their sovereignty
too high. At present, it seems very unlikely that the Kremlin in battle-scarred and security may well be at stake.
will get more than symbolic concessions from Washington, Avdiivka in the Economic sanctions may inluence
much fewer than it perhaps hopes to get after more concrete Donetsk region how the Kremlin plans its actions in
tokens of Russian determination. Vladimir Putin is less in- the next few months and years, but
terested in substantive commitments than in the spectacle they cannot change the underlying dy-
of Russian assertiveness and American retreat. namics. The existing order is starting
The question, were Russia to make a move, is what kind. Europeans to buckle, and Washington needs to
Kremlin insiders like longtime foreign policy adviser Ser- would decide how best to replace it with new
gey Karaganov have downplayed the prospect of an invasion arrangements. Does it prefer to reach
followed by territorial occupation. Instead, new incidents suddenly a grand bargain with Moscow whereby
may be manufactured in the coming days, after which Putin be living the two powers divide Europe among
would address Russia, explaining he had no alternative but themselves? Or does it prefer to en-
to order a series of airstrikes and limited ground operations
in a world courage and support the develop-
against targets inside Ukraine, as a way to eliminate a threat where ment of a new European pole capable
to Russian interests. His goal would be to degrade Ukrainian Russia of balancing Russian power? Should
defense capacities, provoke a political crisis in Kyiv, and af- Joe Biden spend the rest of his term
irm a new precedent for Ukraine and beyond. A symbol of would have in fruitless summits with Putin, or
imperial power rather than an ugly battle for territory. a claim to should he sit at the table with the E.U.
European countries remain deeply divided over what intervene and Britain to discuss how Europe can
level of Russian aggression should trigger sanctions, with become a sovereign actor in foreign
Germany even pushing for an energy exemption in pro- anywhere policy and security? What is frustrat-
posed dollar sanctions on Russia. Given these constraints, ing about the crisis is how we keep
the Western response might be kept within certain lim- avoiding the larger questions of politi-
its, but neither Ukraine nor world politics would survive cal order. Eurasia, the supercontinent,
G U I L L A U M E B I N E T — M YO P

unchanged. is being reshaped before our eyes.

The existing security order in Europe would be broken
beyond repair. Europeans would suddenly be living in a Maçães was Portugal’s Secretary of State
world where Russia would have a claim to intervene any- for European Afairs and is the author of
where in its near abroad or even beyond, anytime it felt Geopolitics for the End Time
36 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
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 H E A LT H

T H E

38
 B E G I N N I N G
O F T H E E N D ?
COVID-19 is learning to
live with us. It might be time
we learn to live with it
By Alice Park

Testing for COVID-19

will still be necessary
even if the virus
becomes endemic

PHOTOGR APH BY THOMAS PETER 39

H E A LT H

WHEN JEREMY LUBAN However, THere are several lines of scientiic evidence
that support the more sanguine prediction of what 2022
F I R S T S AW T H E G E N E T I C might hold for SARS-CoV-2. Textbooks teach that viruses,
being the relatively simple entities they are, have limited
SEQUENCE OF THE resources to devote to their one goal: survival. Every time
they make copies of themselves, viruses can mutate to be-
OMICRON VARIANT LAST come more or less infectious, or more or less harmful to
NOVEMBER, HE KNEW their hosts. Because a virus can’t reproduce on its own, and
needs to borrow the reproductive machinery of cells from
R I G H T AWAY I T W O U L D those it infects, it’s all about balance: inding the mutations
that allow it to spread more efectively, while not causing
BE A SERIOUS PROBLEM. its hosts to die.
Omicron appears to be perfecting that strategy. Last No-
vember, Luban saw changes within Omicron’s genetic se-
There was the sheer number of new mutations—as many quence that made the variant at least several times more
as 50, with 30 or so in the critical places that vaccines and transmissible than the previous one, Delta, which was al-
drug treatments target—and the fact that this version of the ready twice as transmissible as the original version of SARS-
SARS-CoV-2 virus seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. CoV-2. That enabled Omicron to quickly dominate the globe:
“It’s like when you look at the irst page of a comic book and “In two weeks, it went from accounting for 1% of COVID-19
all of the Marvel villains have gotten together,” says the Uni- cases around the world to 50% of cases, and in one month, to
versity of Massachusetts virus expert. “How are we going almost 100% of cases,” says Shangxin Yang, assistant profes-
to survive this?” he recalls thinking. “We can deal with one sor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University
[mutation], but 10 or more of them all at once?” of California, Los Angeles. “That’s amazing speed; we could
Yet Omicron, like all villains, has an Achilles’ heel. While never have imagined any virus could do that.”
it can be dangerous for people who are unvaccinated or have But, Yang says, there is evidence that Omicron’s high
pre-existing health conditions, for those vaccinated or pre- transmissibility may herald SARS-CoV-2’s last hurrah.
viously infected, this variant seems to cause only relatively Whereas all previous variants preferred to infect cells deep
mild disease—a sore throat, some lu- or coldlike symptoms, in the human respiratory tract, nestling all the way into the
or no noticeable symptoms at all. lungs, Omicron tends to target the upper respiratory tract.
Some have interpreted this as a sign that SARS-CoV-2 That makes it more like the common cold virus and could
may be reaching the end of its onslaught. If Omicron isn’t explain why, at least among the immunized, Omicron tends
as virulent, then the virus might be weakening, the think- to cause milder disease than previous variants.
ing goes. Some scientists have gone so far as to contemplate Those early versions of SARS-CoV-2 were also more likely
that of all the versions of SARS-CoV-2 that have hit human- to lead to cell fusion, in which a virus infects one cell, then
ity over the past two years, Omicron might be the prefer- co-opts other viruses that have infected other cells to fuse
able one to get infected with. And if more people are vacci- into a larger virus-making machine. Good for the virus; bad
nated or infected with Omicron and develop immunity, that for the patient, since the phenomenon can trigger inlamma-
protection could help us reach the magical herd-immunity tion, which can in turn destroy cells and tissues—a hallmark
threshold—which experts say could be anywhere between of late-stage, severe COVID-19 disease. Omicron doesn’t usu-
70% and 90% of the population—that would inally make ally do that, which might explain its milder efect on human
SARS-CoV-2 throw up its spike proteins in defeat. health. “All of this comes together to make the perfect sce-
According to some models, by the time Omicron works nario to end the pandemic,” says Yang. “This is exactly how
its way through the global population, up to half of the world
will have been infected, and presumably be immune to the
variant. With fewer unprotected hosts to infect, viruses gen-
erally begin to peter out, and optimistic models show SARS-
CoV-2 may be headed down that path. If so, then COVID-19
would shift from a pandemic to an endemic disease, con- NOW IS THE MOMENT TO RETHINK THE OFFICE
ined to pockets of outbreaks that erupt among immuno-
compromised or unvaccinated populations—but that are
manageable and containable because most people would
be protected from its worst efects.
That’s the upside. But there’s also the possibility of a
darker timeline, in which the unpredictable nature of SARS-
CoV-2 to date drives the next year and beyond. If that occurs,
it could mean Omicron is not the beginning of the end but
the beginning of a more transmissible, more virulent, and
more harmful virus.
40 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 △
most other pandemics with respiratory pathogens have Vaccinations are essential to protect
ended. They spread like ire and then eventually most people us now, and from future variants
either became vaccinated or infected, and when the popula-
tion reached herd immunity, the pandemic ended.”
That doesn’t mean it’s the end of SARS-CoV-2, but on the other hand, a diferent, more troubling scenario
rather the beginning of a more manageable COVID-19. At is also possible. Over the past two years, SARS-CoV-2 has
this stage, says Yang, “the virus has already accomplished proved to be an especially unpredictable virus. In the fall of
its goal of establishing a balance with its host—humans. 2020, most virologists would have guessed that if a new vari-
It can spread easily among hosts, but not kill them. The ant of SARS-CoV-2 were to emerge, it would be a souped-up
virus has mutated to the point where it just chooses to live version of Delta—there was even talk of a Delta-plus. But
among us without causing too much trouble. And in return, Omicron surprised them all. “This isn’t a Delta-plus vari-
we have to learn to live with the virus as if it is just another ant,” says Jeremy Farrar, president of the global health re-
common cold.” search foundation Wellcome Trust. “It’s from left ield ... We
haven’t seen one lineage of this virus evolving into another
lineage. We’ve seen things coming from a much broader
spectrum. What that means is that we can’t expect the
daughter or son of Omicron to then become the next thing
we deal with. It could be something that comes from a dif-
ferent part of the virus’s evolutionary path.”
As surprising as it was, Omicron probably didn’t appear
overnight. The variant likely evolved in stages, and the in-
creasing transmissibility of what would become Omicron
at irst went largely unnoticed. To be prepared for future,
potentially dangerous variants, global health experts say
we need to improve surveillance eforts, and increase the
amount of genetic sequencing of the virus that is done
around the world. Laying bare the virus’s genome can pro-
vide the earliest hints of any changes, and clues as to which
of these aberrations could be dangerous for human health.
41
H E A LT H

If we’d been able to identify the genetic changes that led

to the Delta variant early on, for example, we might have
prioritized locking down the parts of the world where those
mutations were common, says Pardis Sabeti, professor at
the Center for Systems Biology at Harvard and member of
the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. “That’s what ge-
nomic sequencing can do—stay ahead of diagnoses [of new
cases] so we can try to develop countermeasures against
something, including developing new therapies. It’s about
‘Know thy enemy.’ If your enemy moves, you have to move.”
With real-time genetic information, we could better know
how to prioritize vaccine and treatment eforts.
The problem, as Sabeti and Luban note, is that we don’t
have such genomic eyes on the virus across the globe. Even
in the U.S., where sequencing is becoming a priority, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National
SARS-CoV-2 Strain Surveillance program is sequencing
only a small percentage of positive cases each week—in
the single digits. Only about ive countries have sequenced
double-digit percentages of their positive cases so far.

How likely is it that Omicron is indeed SARS-CoV-2’s

last hurrah? Farrar puts the chance at 40% to 50%. One
reason the odds aren’t higher is that Omicron’s genetic
changes make it more capable of evading capture by the
antibodies the immune system makes, after both natu-
ral infection and vaccination. That helps the virus to
spread more quickly—up to the point where the virus be-
comes too good at spreading and causing disease, which
is self-defeating.
“The virus doesn’t want to kill its host,” says Dr. Warner
Greene, senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Vi-
rology. “That’s counterproductive.” If the virus has indeed
L O N G C O V I D,
struck the perfect balance for reproducing in human hosts,
it’s possible that this particular version is the one that will
persist in the human population for years and years to come.
LONG WAIT
That’s the path public-health experts hope SARS-CoV-2 will Clinics can’t open fast enough as long-haulers
take. “The best scenario is for the virus to become so weak- wait months for care By Jamie Ducharme
ened it just becomes a vaccine itself,” says Greene. “It would
spread, but it wouldn’t cause severe disease. In that kind
of setting, the virus would start to lose its foothold and be- in march 2020, Laura FiTTon, a 50-year-oLd enTre-
come endemic in very small areas, replicating only when it preneur in Massachusetts, had a high fever, sore throat,
inds people who are not previously infected or vaccinated.” gastrointestinal issues, and loss of taste. But at the time,
That assumes, however, that most of the world’s pop- few of those symptoms were linked to COVID-19, so Fit-
ulation is vaccinated, or recovered from being naturally ton wasn’t eligible for a test. It took seven more months of
infected with Omicron. The fewer opportunities SARS- persistent symptoms—including brain fog, swollen joints,
CoV-2 has to replicate, the fewer people will become in- fast heart rate, chills, and fatigue—for a doctor to order
fected, and the fewer people will get sick. Every variant an antibody test. Although the test came back negative—
in the virus’s short two-year history is the direct result perhaps because of how much time had passed since she
of unchecked viral replication, so the surest way to turn had gotten sick—Fitton was relieved that a doctor was i-
COVID-19 from a pandemic into an endemic disease is nally exploring the possibility of Long COVID, a little-
to shut down as many of those opportunities as possible. understood condition in which people sufer symptoms
And take advantage of the opportunity that Omicron rep- long after their acute infection passes.
REBECCA STUM PF F OR TIME

resents. “If we have learned anything from the past year, Two years after her initial illness, getting care is still a
it is that variants will continue to emerge,” says Dr. David battle. She must wait until July for a simple screening call
Ho, professor of microbiology and immunology at Colum- with a Long COVID clinic in Boston, and until this Octo-
bia University. If we can increase immunity, he says, “that ber for a neurologist to walk through the results of tests
will help protect [us] from the next one.”  he ran on her in November 2021. In the meantime, she’s
42 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 ◁
Carol Cress, a Long
COVID patient at the
Beneis clinic in Montana,
gets her breathing tested

pediatric Long COVID patients in December, and Madonna

Rehabilitation Hospital in Nebraska opened a recovery cen-
ter the same month.
Even with this progress, medical care has not kept pace
with the overwhelming needs of patients, given how many
people report months-long waits for care or can’t ind it at
all. With research about Long COVID and its treatment still
in its early stages, there is no guarantee of recovery even for
those lucky enough to get into a specialty clinic.
“I’m pleased to see the growth of the post-COVID care
centers,” says Diana Berrent, who founded Survivor Corps
after testing positive for COVID-19 in March 2020. But “I’ve
yet to see where they are really moving the needle in terms
of actually getting people better.”
It’s not clear how many Long COVID patients there are
in the U.S. In 2020, researchers estimated that between 10%
and 30% of people with COVID-19 would develop long-term
symptoms. That percentage is probably lower among people
who have been infected after being vaccinated, given that
studies have shown that being vaccinated signiicantly re-
duces the odds of developing Long COVID.
The U.K. has a better understanding of the scope of the
problem. According to data published in January by the U.K.
mostly on her own to manage her symptoms, which are still government, about 1.3 million people there said they were
present but have improved signiicantly since she got vac- living with Long COVID as of December 2021. Estimates
cinated last year. “I can’t imagine what this is like for some- vary for the U.S., but authors of a paper published in August
body who’s in the condition I was in,” she says, “and is just 2021 in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that
getting stonewalled everywhere.” at least 15 million people in the U.S. would have Long COVID
So many people are sufering from Long COVID that by the pandemic’s end. However, that was published before
treatment centers can’t keep up. In many ways, that’s un- the emergence of the highly contagious Omicron variant,
derstandable: the diagnosis did not exist before 2020. which has already produced a record-shattering number of
New York City’s Mount Sinai Health System was one of the cases—some of which are likely to develop into Long COVID.
irst places in the country to launch a post-COVID-19 re- The U.S. health care system can barely keep up. Because
covery center, in May 2020. By early 2021, many top U.S. people with Long COVID have reported more than 200 dis-
hospitals, including the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, tinct symptoms, they often require care from clinicians in
and Massachusetts General Hospital, had taken notice and multiple specialties, from pulmonology and neurology to
opened their own practices. There is now at least one Long gastroenterology and psychiatry. Stanford’s Post-Acute
COVID treatment clinic in almost every U.S. state, accord- COVID-19 Syndrome Clinic, for example, tries to use its
ing to a directory kept by Survivor Corps, a COVID-19 and slim staf most eiciently through a hub-and-spoke model,
Long COVID patient-support group. explains co-director Dr. Linda Geng. Each patient is exam-
As many Americans begin to wonder if there’s a light at ined by one of the clinic’s staf physicians and, if necessary,
the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, new clinics are continuing is then referred to a specialist. The clinic analyzes ive or six
to open across the country, an acknowledgment that Long new patients each week, Geng says—but it has a months-
COVID symptoms won’t disappear even if the pandemic long waitlist.
fades. After treating long-haulers—the name sometimes To see more patients, the clinic would need not only
given to people who have Long COVID—virtually through- more physicians, but also more nurses, medical assistants,
out the pandemic, cardiopulmonary physical therapist Noah and billing coordinators, Geng says. That’s no small order,
Greenspan opened a brick-and-mortar pulmonary-rehab given the personnel shortages that have plagued the in-
center in New York City in December because, he says, dustry since before the pandemic. In 2019, the U.S. had an
“We need action, not lip service,” to solve the Long COVID estimated 20,000 fewer doctors than necessary to meet
problem. Indiana’s Parkview Health also opened a clinic for demand. Now, after mass resignations and with rampant
43
H E A LT H

staing issues because of Omicron, hiring extra health care had signiicant lung damage and started him on nighttime
workers is even more challenging. oxygen and a home breathing device called a nebulizer.
Long waits are also partly due to the criteria many clinics “I feel 10 times better,” Mike says. “I don’t think I’m quite
require new patients to meet. Many care centers treat only back to pre-COVID, but I’m 90, 95% there.”
people who had a laboratory-conirmed COVID-19 diagno- Amber also recently started with a slew of assessments,
sis. But many people with lingering symptoms—particularly from chest X-rays to cognitive, breathing, and physical-
those who got sick in the spring of 2020, before tests were itness tests, to ind the root cause of her symptoms. Like
widely available—never got a positive COVID-19 result. her husband, she has improved with overnight supplemen-
Dr. Brad Nieset, a family-medicine physician, runs one tal oxygen.
of Montana’s only Long COVID treatment clinics, Beneis But other patients remain sick for no clear reason, says
Health System’s Post-COVID-19 Recovery Program. He does Dr. Luis Ostrosky-Zeichner, a leader of UTHealth’s post-
not require a positive test result from his patients. “No mat- COVID-19 recovery program in Texas. (The clinic has about
ter what, they called me because there’s a problem,” he says. 900 current patients and still has a waitlist.) “These patients
The clinic has treated about 600 people so far and currently are sick and they’re symptomatic and we need to take care
has a waitlist about a month long. of them,” Ostrosky-Zeichner says. “But we need to get to
To help triage the requests, Nieset begins with a tele- the bottom of why are they here?”
health consultation. Then, when patients come into the The U.S. National Institutes of Health has earmarked
clinic—sometimes driving from hundreds of miles away— more than $1 billion for Long COVID research, but it could
his team performs a comprehensive physical and mental be years before those studies produce actionable results.
assessment to decide who can be treated by a primary-care “Consolidating the way we study these patients would be
provider, and who needs care from specialists. useful,” Ostrosky-Zeichner says. “We need a systematic way
Long COVID clinics must rely heavily on primary care to approach this, with a national registry.”
to meet surging demand, says Dr. Gavin Yamey, associate There are some eforts to share treatment guidelines
director for policy at the Duke University Global Health among physicians. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Institute. There aren’t enough spe- Prevention has interim guidance for
cialists, and many people can’t af- treating patients with Long COVID,
ford their services anyway. “It be- L ON G C OV ID C L IN IC S and several medical groups, like
gins in primary care,” Yamey says. the American Academy of Physical
“There needs to be awareness and M US T RELY HEAV ILY Medicine and Rehabilitation, have
recognition of the condition, and O N P RI M A RY CA RE T O released Long COVID treatment
health care providers need to un- guidelines.
derstand what the care pathway M E ET S U RGIN G DEM A N D This type of collaboration is also
looks like.” useful to patients navigating their
The problem is, nobody fully new condition. One of Fitton’s big-
understands how to cure Long COVID. In that regard, it’s gest complaints is that Long COVID experts don’t always
similar to other mysterious and complex chronic illnesses share their knowledge publicly, leaving patients on their
like myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome own unless they can get into a specialty clinic. “Nobody
(ME/CFS), chronic Lyme disease, and ibromyalgia. “To be seems to know what to tell me to do,” Fitton says. “I feel
frank,” Geng says, “we don’t have a curative therapy.” like answers are out there, and I’m just having to do my
Still, people have recovered from Long COVID. Some, own advocacy.”
like Fitton, improve after vaccination, although experts
aren’t sure why it happens; others have damage to a spe- Despite efforts to share best practices, some doctors
ciic organ or an underlying illness that is fairly straight- still don’t believe their patients have Long COVID, which
forward to treat; and others simply get better with time. presents another barrier to treatment. Jackie Olvera, 38, ex-
Amber and Mike Rausch, both of whom are 53 and in perienced debilitating symptoms, including tremors and
treatment for Long COVID at the Beneis clinic in Mon- paralysis episodes, months after being hospitalized with
tana, are two such success stories. Both husband and wife COVID-19 in January 2021. But Olvera says that when she
caught COVID-19 in late 2020 and experienced symptoms suggested to her doctor that she might have Long COVID,
well into 2021: complete exhaustion for Mike and brain fog she was dismissed. “She told me to stop blaming COVID
and excruciating headaches for Amber. for all my symptoms,” Olvera says. “She told me that the
They were relieved when Mike was referred to the Bene- only thing that was wrong with me was that I needed to lose
is clinic in the summer of 2021. Starting with Mike’s initial weight and exercise.” Later, Olvera found a physician who
screening call, Amber says, they felt comforted by learning agreed she had Long COVID and enrolled her in a specialty
that “we know so much more about COVID and long-haul clinic near her home in California.
symptoms than we did at the beginning of the pandemic,” The initial doctor’s reaction wasn’t only an obstacle to
she says. “I just remember [Nieset] giving us so much hope treatment. Olvera says the doctor also slowed down the ap-
that day.” plication process when she sought disability beneits. Al-
Nieset’s team noticed during intake screenings that Mike though Olvera did ultimately get disability beneits, they
44 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 △
Amber Rausch’s blood pressure is patients feel guilty that they survived when so many peo-
taken during Long COVID testing ple haven’t. Others struggle to ind acceptance from doc-
tors and loved ones or have a hard time adjusting to their
new realities, which can look very diferent from before they
expired at the end of January. She has also been too sick got sick. Many people are too ill to work, or even to leave
to work and is currently without health insurance, which their homes for long stretches of time. Trying to resolve a
means she can’t aford many treatments, visits to her Long complex, hard-to-treat illness can be stressful and isolating.
COVID clinic, or her nearly $10,000 in medical bills. Al- Whatever the cause, Nieset says Long COVID patients
though she still struggles with reduced mobility, chronic need mental—not just physical—support. “I’ve never seen a
pain, and fatigue, Olvera plans to return to her hospitality phenomenon in medicine where I’ve actually heard patients
job to regain health insurance. talking the way [people in the] military would, dealing with
The ordeal has been taxing mentally as well as physically. PTSD and diferent things,” Nieset says.
“I was feeling like I wasn’t getting anywhere,” Olvera says. Duke’s Yamey stresses that while Long COVID is a health
“I was just feeling so broken, so left out, and [doctors] weren’t condition, it also needs holistic solutions. “It’s not just about
listening.” There have been times when she considered sui- the health issues,” he says. “There are also issues around em-
cide, she says—something that research suggests is alarm- ployment and the need for social support and sick pay and
ingly common among Long COVID patients. Up to 28% of making sure that people can access disability beneits. You
people experience depression symptoms at least 12 weeks need to take a truly psychosocial and biomedical approach.”
after their initial COVID-19 diagnosis, according to one re- For patients who have experienced compassionate Long
cent paper published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research. COVID care, like Amber and Mike Rausch, the payof can
Survivor Corps also reports that almost 20% of its mem- be huge. For a while, the couple thought they might never
bers have considered suicide, and Berrent says the group feel well enough to enjoy activities they loved like kayaking,
is “ielding suicide threats on a daily basis.” biking, and hiking, which led to some “dark days,” Amber
REBECCA STUM PF F OR TIME

Some preliminary research suggests that because the says. Now they’re getting back to many of those hobbies and
virus that causes COVID-19 can afect the brain, it could feeling hopeful about the future.
have psychological side efects. But the simple fact of hav- “If I could do anything,” Mike says, “it’s to ensure that
ing Long COVID can also take a psychological toll. Nieset, the news gets out that this is treatable, and you can feel
from the Montana Long COVID clinic, says some of his better.” 
45
 HISTORY

ARTIST BILLIE
CARTER-RANKIN’S
TREATMENT OF A 1920S
PHOTOGRAPH FROM THE
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

46 TIME February 14/February 21, 2022

I S E A RC HE D FOR BY IMANI PERRY
A NS W E RS A B O UT MY
E NS LAV E D A N CEST ORS.
W HAT I FOU ND WAS
M ORE QU E S TI ONS

47
HISTORY

I wanted to travel to Maryland, to

see something about my ancestral be-
ginnings, but I had no idea of where to
go. I ultimately chose to go to Annap-
olis, the capital. It is a precious town.
One that is self-consciously old, like it
was manicured that way. I wasn’t sure
exactly what I was looking for there at
irst. I just went.

You’d be hard-pressed to ind a

Deep Southerner who would ever call
Maryland or Washington, D.C., the
South. Even the storied history of en-
slaved people from Maryland doesn’t
keep it from seeming Northern. Not
Alethia Browning Tanner, an enslaved
woman who sold vegetables directly
outside the White House. Not even
Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tub-
man, heroes of history who were both
held captive in Maryland. I still am
reticent to call the mid-Atlantic South
the South. And yet I have learned in
the course of my travels that there
are “Souths,” plural as much as sin-
everyThing i have learned abouT of reverence and sadness. It is unlikely gular, despite my Deep South bias.
my one known ancestor from Mary- I will ever know what happened or I know that while the South is a de-
land comes from a pair of Census re- when exactly she was born. I can guess. termined thing, it is also a shifting
ports, and the clarity they fail to ofer The ages are probably wrong but could and varied one. Redeclared many
is a lesson in itself. Some years ago, be right, or at least one of them, any- times as a fact, it echoes far beyond its
I began to look at them every so often; way. There were some enslaved people moving borders.
one is from 1870, the other from 1880. who lived to extraordinarily old ages. There was a particular place I had
I’m always hoping to discover some- Perhaps she was sold from Maryland learned about as I was digging around

P R E V I O U S S P R E A D A N D O P P O S I T E PA G E : P H O T O - I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y B I L L I E C A R T E R - R A N K I N : L I B R A R Y O F C O N G R E S S (2)
thing I missed—about myself, about down the river. Maybe from a man in stories of Maryland, and I wanted
my past. Every gaze is a moment of named Lowe to a man named Wat- to get to it in order to igure out what
wonder and frustration. There she kins who wanted to settle the Georgia I was looking for here. I’d read that
is, twice. In 1870, she is Easter Lowe. frontier. And later, as Mississippi was there was a pub where Founding Fa-
Born in Maryland in 1769, 101 years carved out of Georgia and Alabama thers used to drink, carouse, and sell
old, Black. In 1880, she is Esther Wat- out of Mississippi, she, a woman who Black people. And it is still open. My
kins, born in Georgia in 1789, 91 years at least by one account was born before phone GPS went topsy-turvy for a little
old, widowed, Black. Both improba- the nation was a nation, was still living, bit, but eventually I found the tavern.
ble and extraordinary. In rare, lighter an elderly freedwoman. I stepped inside, hoping to feel
moments, it makes me think of Mark Even if I doubt her age, there is the something mystical. Nothing. It was
Twain’s humorous story about George AncestryDNA evidence that says I de- dimly lit and fairly inglorious. I sat
Washington’s mammy, Joice Heth, who scend from people who lived in early awkwardly in a black-painted wood
in newspaper report after newspaper 18th century Virginia. Inexact bor- chair, alone and facing a young family
report kept getting older until her age ders aside, what holds is this: we came with a little girl in a high chair, with
rivaled Methuselah’s (as we say it). before America was America. This the bar behind me. I ate ish fried in a
Whereas Twain noted a senti- woman who bore the name either of thick batter. The pocket of heat under
mentalism toward the old plantation my favorite biblical queen or my favor- the skin was tongue-burning but in-
darky that verged on the ridiculous, my ite holiday was here, not as an accom- creased the sweetness of the lesh.
own ancestor’s imprecision is a bitter plice to the settler colony, but as the I drank cranberry juice with ice cubes
wound. And I have some awe, too, at victim of its displacement and captiv- too large to chew. I looked at the ix-
what must have been a daunting at- ity. She was a witness to the very exclu- tures; I looked at the loor. It was dis-
tempt to name her age. “How to place sions that laid the foundation for the orientingly dark.
her in history?” somebody speculated. creation of a national identity. It is a As historians of slavery have noted,
Most of the time I feel a combination remarkable status. our images of auction blocks are more
48 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 A PHOTO FROM THE
1930S WAS CAPTIONED
OLD SLAVE; THE WOMAN
WENT UNNAMED

I was served cranberry juice and ish

by a young White man with lopping
brown hair and an eager smile is ex-
actly where my foreparents might have
been wrenched away from everything
they loved. Matter-of-fact, like that.
When I went outside again, the sun-
light felt like it was about to blind me.

Next, I decIded, I’d visit two historic

museum homes of which Annapolis
boasts. The irst was under construc-
tion. I made it to the second just in time
for a docent-led tour. It began inaus-
piciously. The guide was lovely, but
the moment the phrase Those nasty
Indians tried to fight us, and we had to
fight back came out of her mouth, chill
bumps raised on my forearms. Well,
I thought, this might be some good ma-
terial. Not a moment later a manager
ran up to me: “I heard you’re working
on a book!” I hadn’t intended to be
treated as though I was there on an of-
icial visit. But I accepted her gracious-
ness. She told me that I could take a
hard-hat tour of the building that was
under construction and gave me her
card, which I promptly lost. And then
she followed up, explaining, “We are
trying to tell the history more thor-
oughly. That house is where we found
artifacts that relate to the history of en-
slaved people in Maryland.” Her words
were ofered gingerly and with sensi-
tivity. I didn’t inquire further. I wasn’t
interested in making an indictment or
issuing praise. I was just trying to see
how the back-then is inside the now.
We walked through rooms restored

theatrical than the reality often was.

Regular places were sites of the trade
in people. The everydayness of disas-
ter was a feature of slave society. We
might be inclined to look for some-
where to place a memorial or an altar
Inexact borders aside,
to the past that we can treat as partic- what holds is this: we came
ularly hallowed ground. But the truth
is that this mundane place where before America was America
49
HISTORY

with great detail. Historic preserva- stuck in my craw. Slave cooks had to death came and went without public
tion is a painstaking business, espe- possess a great deal of knowledge. notice. Tears welled up in my eyes,
cially when it comes to paint colors and They had to understand science and and I am somewhat embarrassed to say
fabrics. It is a matter of samples and math, even though they were illiter- I felt a momentary relief that if my an-
formulas, mailing them back and forth ate. They had to keep track of propor- cestor, Easter or Esther, worked here,
and cross-referencing up the wazoo tion, the distribution of heat and the I didn’t know it.
and things being not quite right until ingredients to every meal they made.
they are iterated to perfection. Unex- The docent pointed to a device, gleam- i Wonder if Easter or Esther looked
pectedly, the docent turned and looked ing metal with a pulley, that was used at the ships, as Frederick Douglass did,
at me wide-eyed. “I hate to tell you. But to turn meat in order for it to be fully longingly. I wonder if she dreamed of
I have to talk about”—and she whis- cooked; though it aided the task, boarding one and inding another
pered the word—“slavery.” I shrugged. cooking still required rapt attention. place to be or returning to her mother’s
“Well, yes,” she said, “it did happen.” Maybe because I have spent my en- home. Easter Lowe, or Esther Watkins,
“Yes. It did,” I replied. tire adult life studying and research- is my ancestor and my muse. I set her
My companions on the tour were a ing with the control and aid of books, alongside the documented stories of
lovely couple, older and White. They archives, and computers, the coloni- Harriet Tubman and Frederick Doug-
were deeply interested in history and zation of this Black woman’s mind lass. Home is such a jealously guarded
preservation and traveled frequently to hit me hard. I have long known that concept in my life, so speciic. I don’t
experience both. The woman, a Ken- each purchase of a slave was an in- know how it was in hers. Did slavery
tuckian with a thin gray bowl haircut vestment. The feeding and clothing of make home always somewhere else?
and a smile so earnest it looked like it one was as well. The task was to keep In Barracoon, Zora Neale Hurston
belonged on a 12-year-old, struggled a them alive enough to work and pro- made clear that “home” for the last
bit. These old homes are hard to move create, and cheap enough to yield the Africans brought here on slave ships
was diferent than it was for African
Americans, for whom this was the only
place they knew. Home was vexed but
We, descendants of the incomplete here. For the Africans, it remained out
there. Without knowing how close
puzzle, know a good deal about or far Africa was in Easter’s life, my
thoughts could not even be convinc-
dwelling in rough, negotiated spaces ingly speculative.
When it comes to memory and slav-
ery, there are people who center their
concern on the gaps and absences.
about in if you have a physical disabil- highest proit margin. Also, they were They dwell on the grief of silences. And
ity. Before we made it to the basement, supposed to be abused enough to ter- there are people who every day are it-
my bowl-cut companion needed to sit. rorize them out of retaliation. It has ting puzzle pieces together to ind as
The docent led her and her husband often been noted that slaves were de- much truth and detail as possible. Both
to the garden. I walked down a set of nied knowledge as a way to keep them are essential.
stairs and joined in on another tour. docile. But some, like the builders, the We, descendants of the incomplete
blacksmiths, the plantation botanists, puzzle, know a good deal about dwell-
A young White couple recently and the cooks, were required to hold ing in rough, negotiated spaces. Trap-
graduated from Georgetown Univer- vast knowledge and steady it in their ping places where intimacy existed
sity was listening. They were smartly minds and memory because pen and despite the fact that law did not recog-
but casually dressed, with studiously paper were denied. nize its sanctity. Places where life and
respectful expressions on their faces. The life task of the enslaved per- death and woundedness and love all
Standing in the kitchen, this docent son was to stay alive and where possi- persisted. But did our ancestors truly
told us that the enslaved woman in ble love and ind some joy. I imagined feel at home? (Do we?) Was home some
charge of the cooking slept there, on this cook lying on this intact ground, afect in the ether, hard to hold, or a fu-
the loor in front of the hearth. It was shivering, sweltering, alone, and know- ture perfect tension, imagined as part
freezing cold in the winter and swelter- ing. An archive in her head, her name of some freedom to come? This word
ing in the summer. On a kitchen table, left on no ledger, no wall in this house. that I hold in my mouth, ever and al-
which, compared with the elaborately There is no recording of the precise ways meaning the state where I was
set dining table upstairs, was rough- color of her lesh or apron. I imagined born—home is not something I am sure
hewn, a feast awaited delivery. I won- her smacked for an error or patron- had meaning before freedom.
dered who brought upstairs the sump- izingly praised, and aching. Eventu-
tuous meals replicated in plastic. ally arthritic, smiled at for making the Perry is the author of South to Amer-
Then the guide said something that loveliest cakes, until, like her birth, her ica, from which this essay is adapted
50 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
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 POLITICS

Crisis
Management
RECORD-BREAKING REAL ESTATE PRICES, SURGING RENTS,
AND HOMELESSNESS ON THE RISE. THE NATION’S LEAST
TRACTABLE PROBLEMS ARE ON THE DOORSTEP OF HOUSING AND
URBAN DEVELOPMENT SECRETARY MARCIA FUDGE
By Abby Vesoulis / San Francisco
 Secretary Fudge
makes an Oct. 27 visit
to a Philadelphia
public-housing
project rehabilitated
by HUD funding
PHOTOGR APH BY MICHELLE GUSTAFSON FOR TIME
POLITICS

If you could levitate,

dronelike, above the dilapidated,
1940s-era public-housing projects
in California’s Sunnydale neighborhood,
you would be able to make out
San Francisco’s gleaming silver skyline,
just seven miles away.
Here, iron-barred windows are framed by ex- for the vast majority of qualifying Americans.
posed electrical wires and water-stained exteriors. Fudge, a 69-year-old who represented Ohio in
There, the median price of a midtier home exceeds Congress for 13 years, is nevertheless getting to
$1.5 million; a one-bedroom apartment rents for work. The housing crisis, she likes to say, is about
an average of $3,330 a month. much more than housing. It’s about people no lon-
On a crisp October morning, U.S. Secretary of ger being able to live where the jobs are. It’s about
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Marcia companies no longer being able to hire people to
Fudge, an austere igure dressed head to toe in ill open positions. And it’s about the damage done
black, stood in the gulf between these disparate to America when buying a home—still the best
realities and connected them. She was in Sunny- way for a family to accrue generational wealth—
dale to champion the city’s plan to erect 1,770 new becomes impossible for all but the already rich.
mixed-income residential units to replace 775 old In her irst 10 months on the job, Fudge has
ones, but her message was about the larger chal- launched a national partnership to rehouse
lenge facing America. The housing problems that 100,000 homeless people, helped make federally
plague this low-income neighborhood, she said, backed low-interest home loans more accessible,
are directly related to those facing San Francisco’s and withdrew a Trump-era rule change that would
more debonair downtown. have allowed federal housing shelters to discrimi-
“I need every single person in this nation to un- nate on the basis of gender identity. She has also
derstand that homelessness is a crisis,” she told the traveled to more than 30 cities and held hundreds
small crowd, but “housing prices are a crisis,” too. of meetings with lawmakers, local policymakers,
In the year since President Joe Biden appointed and community leaders, urging them to use their
Fudge HUD Secretary, those twin crises have power to create more access to afordable homes.
grown worse. The median price for a house in the “I’m talking to anyone who will listen,” she says
U.S. has climbed nearly 20%, while the mean price between stops in California. “Every speech I give,
of a rental unit has jumped roughly 14%, according every meeting I’m in—I talk about it.”
to a Zillow index. Nearly half of American work- But the crisis is acute. COVID-19 sparked a re-
ers no longer earn enough to rent a one-bedroom mote-work exodus by millions of Americans from
apartment in the city where they live. Each of these pricey cities toward rural areas and midsize out-
spikes has cascaded downward, as those who can’t posts where they confronted a nationwide short-
aford to buy drive up rental costs and those who age of housing stock. There simply aren’t enough
can’t aford to rent are out of luck: more than half houses available today to meet demand. The re-
a million Americans, including more than 100,000 sult is a fast-rising housing market that dwarfs the
children, were homeless in 2020—the fourth con- 2006–07 bubble. Back then, most cities’ home
secutive year that number increased. prices swelled by 10% or less. In 2021, 94% of
As the chief of U.S. housing policy, it is, at least metropolitan markets measured by the National
in theory, Fudge’s job to ix this mess, and she Association of Realtors (NAR) saw median sin-
must do it with a depleted set of tools in her tool- gle-family-home prices increase by percentages in
box. HUD, long seen as a backwater among the the double digits. In Salt Lake City, median house
federal agencies, has been gutted over the years prices jumped 26% in a single year. In Austin, they
by budget cuts, mismanagement, and staf attri- surged by 28%.
tion, leaving an assortment of subsidies, housing Federal lawmakers have done almost nothing
projects, and voucher programs that fail to deliver to confront this challenge, Fudge says. Her former
54 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 colleagues have been “so caught up in all of the
other shiny things” that they’ve neglected a most
basic need, she says. “Housing isn’t shiny. Housing
is necessary. We’ve lost track of what’s important.”
A devout Baptist and careful note taker, Fudge is
unlinchingly direct. When she says that now is
HUD’s “last best chance” to prevent economic di-
saster triggered by a lack of housing, she means
it. Fudge is “not being dramatic,” she says. “If we
blow it, we lose.” PAT H S T O O W N E R S H I P

Marcia Fudge didn’t exactly want this job.

When Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris
were elected in 2020, Fudge, a Harris ally and
former chair of the Congressional Black Cau-
cus, pushed to be appointed Secretary of Agri-
culture in the new Administration’s Cabinet. As
Biden began eyeing other leaders for that position,
Fudge openly lamented the idea that she might be
shunted of to one of the less prestigious Cabinet
seats. “You know, it’s always ‘We want to put the
Black person in Labor or HUD,’” she said in an in-
terview with Politico. (Prior to Fudge, the Senate
conirmed HUD Secretaries Ben Carson and Julián
Castro, both of whom are people of color.)
But when Biden tapped her for HUD chief,
Fudge put aside her misgivings. First, she says,
she prayed on it. Then she called her 90-year-
old mom Marian, who told her, “‘Well, I’m disap-
pointed you didn’t get what you wanted. But I be-
lieve this is where God wants you to be,’” Fudge
recalls. “I said, ‘You know, Mom, I woke up think-
ing the same thing.’”
While Fudge was not a housing-policy expert
throughout her congressional tenure, her early
career was deined by the issue. After graduat-
ing from Ohio State University with a bachelor’s
in business, and Cleveland State law school with
her juris doctorate, she worked for the Cuyahoga
County prosecutor’s oice, then its personal-
property-tax department. In 1999, she was elected
the irst woman and the irst Black mayor of War-
rensville Heights, a Cleveland suburb. During her 1. A NARROW CASE STUDY IN
two mayoral terms, Fudge developed a task force REPARATIONS FOR BLACK FAMILIES
to protect against predatory lending and adopted
one of the state’s irst abandoned-property ordi-
nances, allowing the city to acquire vacant build-
ings and lots in order to repurpose them for com-
munity needs—including afordable housing.
One of former mayor Fudge’s most signii-
I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y W E N J I A TA N G F O R T I M E

cant legacies, says current Warrensville Heights

Mayor Brad Sellers, was inserting a provision
into the city’s revitalization plan that provided
homeowners and landlords with funds to rescue
their properties from condemnation. The program
has succeeded, he says, in both preventing squa-
lor and maintaining Warrensville Heights’ hous-
ing supply—a boon that has, in turn, helped keep
PAT H S T O O W N E R S H I P

housing prices comparatively low.

“People assumed that I didn’t know anything
about housing,” Fudge says of critics who sug-
gested she wasn’t prepared to lead HUD. “Was I
an expert? By no stretch of the imagination. But
was I comfortable? Pretty much yes.”
Since becoming HUD Secretary, Fudge has
drawn on her background in local housing policy,
colleagues say. But her leadership has also been
deined by her personal experience. As a kid,
Fudge shared a crowded duplex in Shaker Heights,
Ohio, with her extended family, including great-
grandparents, grandparents, an aunt, and several
cousins. While there was never much extra cash in
the household, Fudge says she was shaped by hav-
ing a stable home in a good neighborhood, which
gave her a ticket to a nationally renowned public
high school. “Home was everything,” she says. “We
didn’t have much. But we did have that.”
Former stafers remember Fudge as kind but
exacting. She rarely raised her voice and never
2. COMMUNITY LAND TRUSTS: BUY swears, says 12-year Fudge veteran Clifton Wil-
liams, but you dreaded disappointing her. “Her
THE HOME, NOT THE GROUND IT’S ON famous words were ‘Good job,’ adds Williams. “If
you got much more than ‘Good job,’ it was actu-
ally shocking.” Longtime Fudge congressional aide
LaDavia Drane recalls organizing a function for
Fudge around 2011. When Drane failed to ensure
the event was up to Fudge’s high standards, Fudge
didn’t chastise her; rather, she made it a teachable
moment, Drane says, by simply not showing up to
her own event. “That,” Drane says, “was really her
telling me, ‘Nope, you missed the mark, sweetie.’”

When Fudge arrived at the HUD headquarters

in March 2021, she oversaw a few initial housekeep-
ing changes. Aides switched all the TV consoles
from Fox News to other outlets, and Fudge herself
made a point of inquiring, out of morbid fascina-
tion, as to the location of the infamous, 17-piece,
$32,000 custom-built dining set that former Sec-
retary Carson had purchased for his oice. (Amid
public uproar, she learned, the Trump Adminis-
tration had canceled the order before delivery.)
After that, Fudge set to work attempting to re-
build her agency. She had a lot to do. From 2009 to
2018, departures brought the number of full-time
HUD staf down nearly 20%, slipping from 8,661
to 7,011, at a time when the number of Americans
paying more than half of their income to rent in-
creased by approximately 8%. Meanwhile, HUD’s
funding for its lagship programs has largely re-
mained stagnant, according to a 2019 Congressio-
nal Research Service report. Accounting for inla-
tion, the agency spent roughly the same amount
in 2018 as it did in 2002.
Clinton-era HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros says
Fudge is up against a familiar, government-wide
 apathy about housing issues. “Every single HUD △ Housing Choice Vouchers, the other major
secretary, Democrat or Republican,” he says, “has Illustrations show program HUD operates to combat housing
a very hard time persuading the White House to how a grant from insecurity, is similarly anemic. The program ofers
include housing as it should.” The exception, per- HUD will transform low-income households vouchers to cover the dif-
haps, is Carson, who tried to decrease funding for 1950s projects into ference between the cost of an afordable rental
his agency by 14%, to move “more people toward mixed-income units unit in their area and 30% of their income. But it’s
in Philadelphia
self-suiciency.” Congress denied the request. massively underfunded for the need it’s supposed
Years of disinvestment have taken their toll. A to address: those who qualify must wait an average
2018 federal inspector general report on HUD de- of nearly 2�∕� years before they receive a voucher, a
scribes a bleak scene at the agency: two decades 2021 CBPP report found.
of “constant turnover and extended vacancies” Fudge has not solved these problems. Nor has
have precipitated “poor management decisions her transition from Congresswoman to Cabinet of-
and questionable execution of internal business icial been seamless. Less than two weeks after she
functions,” the report said. was sworn in, she violated the Hatch Act, a law pro-
That internal dysfunction has had real-world ef- hibiting federal executives from engaging in some
fects. From 2010 to 2016, the annual federal fund- forms of political activity, when she discussed an
ing for public housing fell 21%, according to the upcoming Senate election from behind the White
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). House podium.
Not only do these cuts make it harder to stand up But, says one well-placed Democratic aide, “To
new housing, they also beget reductions in exist- say [Fudge] came in and hit the ground running is
ing supply: some 10,000 public-housing apart- really an understatement.” The agency has cut its
ments disappear each year “because they are no hiring timeline in half and onboarded some 1,500
longer habitable,” owing to asbestos, lead paint, new hires. In June, the Federal Housing Admin-
or other states of disrepair, according to the Na- istration (FHA), a HUD subsidiary, changed how
M I C H E L L E G U S TA F S O N F O R T I M E

tional Low Income Housing Coalition. Fixing ex- FHA lenders account for a potential home buyer’s
isting government-owned public housing would student-loan debt, expanding access to the nation’s
cost the U.S. $70 billion, according to a 2019 es- largest low-interest home-buying program. In Sep-
timate from the National Association of Housing tember, Fudge launched House America, a national
and Redevelopment Oicials—a sum greater than partnership with local government leaders across
HUD’s entire annual budget. the U.S. that helps them utilize their unused funding
57
PAT H S T O O W N E R S H I P

3. CHANGE ZONING RULES SO from the American Rescue Plan, the COVID-19 re-
lief package that passed shortly after Biden took
DEVELOPERS CAN BUILD oice. The program is set to rehouse more than
100,000 homeless individuals and add at least
20,000 new permanent supporting housing units
to the construction pipeline by the end of 2022.
Under Fudge’s leadership, HUD has withdrawn
a rule change proposed by the Trump Adminis-
tration that would have allowed federally funded
housing shelters to exclude transgender and gender
nonconforming individuals from taking shelter in
gender-segregated facilities that aligned with their
identity. The agency expeditiously began distribut-
ing $5 billion from Biden’s American Rescue Plan
to cities and towns to build permanent afordable
housing, provide rental assistance, deliver support
services, and develop emergency housing in re-
sponse to the pandemic. HUD has helped the Trea-
sury Department and White House guide cities and
states on the use of $46 billion in pandemic-related
Emergency Rental Assistance Program funds.

Fudge ‘has never

forgotten and will
never forget where
she comes from.’
—U.S. REPRESENTATIVE RITCHIE TORRES

Fudge has accomplished all this without any

boost to HUD’s annual budget. Congress has yet to
pass a 2022 appropriations bill and the Democrats’
sweeping $1.75 trillion social-services bill, Build
Back Better (BBB), which included $150 billion for
4. 3-D PRINTED HOME CONSTRUCTION housing, remains in limbo. Fudge lobbied the Ad-
ministration to ight for housing, says Represen-
tative Maxine Waters, who chairs the House Com-
mittee responsible for the issue. “I was pleased to
have a friend at HUD,” she says. But for now, Fudge
is stuck with last year’s funds, which, because of
inlation, amounts to a budget cut.

While many public-housing experts ap-

plaud Fudge for her hard-charging start, most are
quick to add that her successes are incremental
and won’t do much to reverse the looming hous-
ing crisis. In the past two decades, too few houses
have been built in the U.S. By January 2021, the
inventory of available homes for sale plunged to
its lowest level since tracking began in 1999, ac-
cording to NAR, leaving the country nearly 7 mil-
lion housing units in the hole. “We have so under-
funded housing over the years,” says former HUD
Secretary Cisneros, “that it’s almost impossible to
meet the need.”
 There are lots of reasons for the shortage.
Supply-chain problems and a lack of construction
labor are partly to blame. But a greater culprit
is that local lawmakers and municipal housing
boards, which tend to consist of homeowners wor-
ried about their own property values, have spent
decades erecting barriers to building high-density
afordable housing anywhere near their backyards.
When contractors are able to pass the onerous reg-
ulatory hurdles to build multi-unit developments,
they proit most by erecting luxury units that rent
at a premium. In the irst half of 2018, 87% of large-
scale rental developments built in the U.S. were
high-end.
HUD, meanwhile, has limited ability to twist
arms. In 1926, the Supreme Court ruled that local
governments have the power to decide what type
of housing can be constructed within their juris-
5. BUILD HOMES LIKE HENRY
dictions. “The fundamental constraint on supply is FORD BUILT CARS
that local governments have to give authorization
for all new housing to be built,” says Jenny Schuetz,
a senior fellow of housing policy at the Brookings
Institution. “We’ve assigned them the role of gate-
keeper on the housing supply side.”
Policy experts from across the political spec-
trum say that Fudge, and Democratic leadership,
need to ind a way forward. Meeting the demand
for new housing, says the NAR, requires “once-in-
a-generation, holistic, and coordinated policy re-
sponse.” To meet existing need, the country would
need to accelerate the pace of construction by 60%
for each of the next 10 years. But if there is a short-
age of new housing developments, there is also a
shortage of the skilled laborers required to build
them: the Home Builders Institute says the con-
struction industry needs to make more than 61,000
new hires every month for the next two years if it
is to keep up with industry growth and attrition.
Progressive policy experts argue for aggressive
action by the federal government. Surely, they say,
the Biden Administration, which has drawn paral-
lels between its policy agenda and the New Deal,
could come up with new ways to ix the problem.
Congress could, for example, make federal govern-
ment funding for state projects, like roads and pub-
lic transit, contingent on local authorities’ chang-
ing land-use rules to encourage the construction
of more afordable housing units, like duplexes.
In the past, Fudge has been willing to take strong
measures to confront challenges, says Representa-
tive Bobby Scott of Virginia, who chairs the House
Education and Labor Committee. When schools
shuttered at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in
March 2020, Scott tapped Fudge, who headed the
House Subcommittee on Nutrition, to ind a way
to feed the 30 million children who relied on the
national free and reduced school-lunch program.
Fudge lew into high gear, working with USDA to
PAT H S T O O W N E R S H I P

get electronic debit cards to qualifying families—

a move that reduced child hunger by 30% almost
overnight. “The logistics and the complications
in setting up a new program were never a factor,”
Scott says, “because of the hard work and imagi-
nation of Marcia Fudge.”

Fudge’s biggest problem these days is try-

ing to igure out which disaster to address irst.
“I don’t know how you choose between people
in need,” she says. “How do you decide that peo-
6. A FRESH TAKE ON RENT-TO-OWN ple who live in public housing should not live in
places that are clean and not rodent infested or
have mold on the walls? How do you make that
decision against some kid who’s living with their
mother on the street?”
On Jan. 9, the most urgent disaster was obvi-
ous: a ive-alarm ire that broke out at a 19-story
apartment complex in the Bronx, killing 17 people.
The district’s Congressman Ritchie Torres rushed
to the scene. He was in a middle school, coordinat-
ing with irst responders near the still-smolder-
ing building, when his phone began to buzz. It was
Fudge, asking how HUD could help. Within hours,
federal oicials were helping facilitate eforts to
rehouse surviving tenants through vouchers and
other means. Fudge is the type of leader, Torres
says, “who has never forgotten and will never for-
get where she comes from.”
But the circumstances that led to the tragedy
in the irst place, Torres adds, show the size of the
task before Fudge. The Bronx ire, after all, was
preventable. In the aftermath, investigators found
that it had been sparked by a malfunctioning space
heater. Previously, tenants had complained to the
city about broken ventilation systems and busted
heaters. The building also lacked ire escapes. “It
was not an accident,” Torres says. “It was a conse-
quence of decades and decades of disinvestment.”
The Bronx ire is also, unfortunately, not
unique. Less than a week before, 12 people died
when a federally funded duplex that housed as
many as 26 caught ire in Philadelphia. A deputy
ire commissioner said the home had been over-
crowded, but like those killed in the Bronx, they
had nowhere else to go: Philadelphia’s waitlist for
public-housing assistance has been closed to most
residents since 2013; in New York City, the odds of
winning one of the city’s coveted rent-controlled
apartments are 1 in 592.
I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y W E N J I A TA N G F O R T I M E

That the country’s housing situation is now, it-

self, a ive-alarm ire is no longer up for debate.
But with midterm elections that may cost Demo-
crats their razor-thin congressional majorities just
nine months away, the more looming question is
whether Fudge will have enough time, or acquire
adequate resources, to do enough about it. —With
reporting by mariah espada/WashingTon □
 For Sale:
Virtual Real Estate
For Actual Money

Chris AdAmo Considers himself lAte to the a party mansion in partnership with the Sand-
game when it comes to investing in NFTs, or non- box; the plot next door sold for nearly $500,000
fungible tokens. He collected his irst one in sum- in December.) Right now, if you open the Sand-
mer 2021. But when it comes to buying up property box on a web browser, all you’ll see is a fat map
in the metaverse, Adamo is early. Eight months ago, of brand logos scattered throughout land-shaped
the Miami-based venture capitalist and a group of masses made up of colorful pixels. (Each of those
associates calling themselves the MetaCollective pixels, or plots, is a property worth real money; in
DAO (a decentralized autonomous organization, general, the concept of scarcity is a farce online,
the blockchain version of a venture capital fund) but in these worlds—as in our physical one—it
used a virtual real estate broker to buy 23 parcels in is often real.) Access is currently restricted to an
the Sandbox, a user-generated, blockchain-based alpha round, now closed, and the launch of further
virtual world, for prices starting at 1 ETH (about functionality is unspeciied. Meanwhile over on
$3,000). A nearby property sold for about 42 ETH, Cryptovoxels, things feel more like an early-stage
or $130,000. The land—pixels, really—borders the video game populated by blank walking manne-
compound of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a buzzy quins. (Sometimes, they fy.) Buildings loom up
NFT community, and a plot owned by Adidas. as blank surfaces, dotted with advertisements and
They’re calling it Sandbox Hill Road, as a nod to art. Click on a billboard, and you’ll see details of
Silicon Valley’s famous Sand Hill Road and to the the NFT work and artist you’re viewing, with an
Sandbox, the platform where this “land” exists. outside link to OpenSea, the NFT marketplace.
Already, the parcels’ value has gone up about 10 MetaCollective has big plans for their blank
times in price, making their holdings potentially squares. For Drew Austin, managing partner at
worth many millions of dollars. venture capital syndicate Red Beard Ventures
“It’s like the New York City of the Sandbox,” and leader for MetaCollective, it’s all about de-
Adamo says. “Like the Lower East Side or SoHo veloping this corner of the future internet into a
right now.” Translation: it’s hip—or at least, they learning center or “university” for self-education
are invested in believing it can be. on all things web3. He envisions virtual classes,
If the metaverse is meant to encompass every- dormitory rooms that users can rent, and a full
thing that exists virtually, from digital art to virtual social experience. “We can re-create what an ed-
worlds, then the real estate parcels that are being ucational digital experience is, in this new digi-
snapped up can be seen as just one type of meta- tal world,” he says. None of this has been built or
versal investment, often listed as NFTs. These vir- designed yet. But the money is real. In late 2021,
tual worlds—The Sandbox, Decentraland, Crypto- one tracking site reported over $100 million in
voxels, Somnium Space, Earth2, Nifty Island, NFT land sales in one week across four of the
Superworld, Wilder World—each ofer diferent largest virtual worlds.
things to users: hyperrealistic graphics, gaming
options, communities of speciic types of early One way tO think about it is like purchasing
adopters. (Snoop Dogg, for instance, staked out a domain name, or snagging a good social media
61
TECHNOLOGY

handle. If email was our home in web1, and social THE SANDBOX valuation of $42 billion. One research report pre-
proiles—like a Facebook or Instagram account— The pixelated dicts virtual gaming worlds alone could be worth
were the web2 home bases for each of us, then pur- layout of the $400 billion by 2025, with the broader metaverse
chased personal property in the form of virtual real Sandbox, showing industry worth over $1 trillion.
estate may be the web3 version. The pitch is that plots owned by Many of the early buyers of virtual real estate
instead of being beholden to providers or plat- Snoop Dogg, Atari, are doubly invested—in the platforms themselves
forms to design, regulate, and control the experi- and more and through personal plays like DAOs buying and
ence, web3 property is intended to be something CRYPTOVOXELS
developing new land—so their bullishness is ulti-
that you, the end user, can build. For brands, it mately self-serving. (Steinwold’s fund, for instance,
A igure traverses
could mean something much more interactive and has its hand in both platform investments and indi-
the branded
active than their current digital presences. For in- real estate in vidual properties; Austin runs a fund that invests
dividuals, it could mean earning income by playing Cryptovoxels in ive diferent worlds.) The technology, too, is
games or selling products. early—Adamo is the irst to admit we’re about a
Andrew Steinwold, managing partner at the decade out from easy mass adoption, and Austin
metaverse-native fund Sfermion, calls it “unlim- notes plenty of “room for improvement,” from the
ited optionality,” breaking free of the bounds of interface to the technically complicated process of
our proiles and pages. An entire cottage industry buying property. But the hunger is there for web3
of developers has already popped up: real estate investors. Virtual property prices have gone up as
brokers, 3-D architects, digital landlords. “One of much as 500% since Facebook’s much-hyped tran-
the things that’s so exciting and fascinating about sition to Meta, according to CNBC. Already, plots in
the metaverse is it’s all about co-creation, right?” some virtual worlds are just as expensive as a real-
says Jessica Peltz Zatulove, another MetaCollective world house. Even if the casual user experience
member. “So we’re also just seeing this blending leaves much to be desired, however, ways to claim
between creators and celebrities and communi- land and plans to develop property are expanding
ties.” Then again, right now this is all speculation. daily. ONE Sotheby’s announced it will build a vir-
The big winners—at the moment, at least—are tual replica of a real-world property in the Sandbox,
platforms and developers, who are raking in in- with ownership crossing over. Crypto company
vestment dollars from early buyers and optimis- Tokens.com spent the equivalent of $2.4 million on
tic traders. Animoca Brands, the company behind a property in Decentraland, Fashion Street Estate,
the Sandbox, recently reported it is worth $5 bil- with plans to stage high-end virtual fashion shows.
lion, up from just over $2 billion in 2021. Axie In- Meanwhile, an anonymous buyer snapped up the
inity, a popular virtual-world game, is trading neighboring property to Snoop Dogg in the Sand-
at a nearly $8 billion valuation. Roblox listed on box for a reported $450,000, betting on proximity
the New York Stock Exchange in March 2021 at a to a famous neighbor as a value-add, just as Meta-
62 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 Collective is betting on Bored Ape Yacht Club. Over DECENTRALAND about having an oice space in a prime location,
at Cryptovoxels, one developer is planning to build Users crowd but it’s really about: Can you rent this land?” she
a New York Stock Exchange–style trading center the entrance to says, “Can you have a store? Can you host events?
and home for crypto-native companies like decen- Decentraland, We’re in a gold-rush moment with virtual real es-
tralized inance protocols in their centrally located a virtual world tate where people don’t know what they’re gonna
Frankfurt property, a spot they purchased because that uses MANA build or how they’re going to build it, but they’re
it allows for larger virtual buildings. The dream cryptocurrency acquiring land in the best possible locations to cre-
is for it to become a central hub in this universe, ate an interesting inancial future.” She imagines
and one with real utility as we migrate into vir- setting up oice space on the MetaCollective cam-
tual realms. pus. “Maybe we have a cofee shop, maybe we have
a cool hangout. Maybe we have town-hall meet-
If thIs sounds more than a little suspicious, join ings, maybe we host oice hours for founders,
the crowd. Even investors are maintaining healthy maybe we just have a museum that inspires cre-
skepticism about the current iterations of virtual ativity, in collaboration across diferent builders
worlds. Steinwold has raised over $100 million in this space,” she says, brainstorming.
from investors for his funds, but he sees much of Plus, the market is untapped; Zatulove cites the
the virtual-world speculation as being overvalued 3 billion people worldwide who are gamers, and
so far. In fact, he says, overvaluation in web3 is are used to spending time in virtual environments.
“true broadly,” from NFT art to crypto tokens. But Even if the Sandbox hasn’t captured their atten-
that still hasn’t stopped him from investing “at the tion yet, the potential is there. “The delight right
company-building level.” And it hasn’t stopped now of virtual real estate is that it’s recognizing
him from backing the Frankfurt NYSE plan in that there’s opportunity ahead that you’re setting
Cryptovoxels. “We’re kind of in the pre-Napster up for yourself,” she says.
F R O M L E F T: S A N D B O X , C R Y P T O V O X E L S , D E C E N T R A L A N D

era. We don’t have Napster yet. We don’t have Adamo has kids, and like any dad, he’s think-
iTunes, and we don’t have Spotify,” he says, com- ing about their future—and about what he can
paring today’s virtual worlds to the early-2000s pass down to them. This real estate might not be a
music-sharing platform and its successors. “That’ll brick-and-mortar property, but it’s still something
come, but it’s gonna take a pretty long time.” bought with their best interests in mind. “With the
For Zatulove, another MetaCollective investor, rates of this year’s growth, this looks like a really
the draw is in the business potential. As a found- multigenerational plan purchase,” he says. Maybe
ing partner of Hannah Grey, an early-stage venture Sandbox Hill Road will disappear into the ether
irm that specializes in emerging platform poten- of the internet in a few years, like LimeWire and
tial for brands, Zatulove is focused on inding ways Kazaa. Maybe he’s bought into a future Spotify. In
to build commerce into this new landscape. “It’s the meantime, the bubble grows. 
63
ECONOMY

Closing
the circle
FINLAND’S EFFORT TO SAVE THE PLANET
BY ENDING ALL WASTE BY LISA ABEND

At Fortum, the
largest company in
Finland, discarded
household plastic
is transformed into
clean pellets on
Dec. 14
PHOTOGR APHS BY INGMAR BJÖRN NOLTING FOR TIME
ECONOMY

△
On a drizzly december mOrning ThaT Confederation of Finnish Industries and the Finn- At the Neulanen
turned Helsinki’s ice-slicked streets even more ish government, they run a simulacrum of a town, kindergarten
treacherous, 11-year-old Minh Anh Ho sat safely with each student performing a job in a diferent in Helsinki
indoors, hunched over a microscope. The rest of her business (all of them based on real-life companies), on Dec. 13,
classmates were occupied with diferent tasks: inter- from banking to health care to fashion design. The Liisa Woitsch
viewing the mayor for the local news station, over- program was launched in 2010, and today roughly invites ideas
seeing the electric company, stocking the shelves 83% of all sixth-graders go through it each year. for repurposing
broken furniture
of the local grocery store. But as a researcher for a And since 2017, their day at Yrityskyla has included
company called Borealis that repurposes plastic, not just experiential lessons on entrepreneurship
she was busy analyzing the sheet of cling ilm that and progressive taxation but also, as Ho’s “job”
lay beneath her lens. “I think it’s a really important makes clear, the circular economy.
job,” she said. “Plastic takes a really long time to dis- As natural resources diminish and the climate
appear, so it would be good to come up with some- crisis grows more acute, the notion of a circular
thing else to do with it and not just throw it away.” economy has been gaining traction around the
Yrityskyla, the learning center where Ho and globe. Most modern economies are linear—they
her class were spending the day, is designed to in- rest on a “take, make, waste” model in which
troduce Finnish schoolchildren to working life. In natural resources are extracted, their valuable ele-
one of 13 centers spread throughout the country ments are transformed into products, and anything
and sponsored by a consortium that includes the left over (along with the products themselves when
66 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 △
they are no longer useful) is discarded as waste. In Among them, Finland stands out for the com- The curriculum
contrast, a circular economy replaces the extrac- prehensiveness of its approach. Back in 2016, it uses foxes
tion of resources with the transformation of exist- became the irst to adopt a national “road map” to introduce
ing products and essentially does away with the to a circular economy—a commitment it reaf- sustainability
notion of waste altogether. irmed last year by setting targeted caps on natural- to Finland’s
A growing number of governments, from the resource extraction. Like other nations, Finland youngest
municipal to the international, have thrown their supports entrepreneurship in creative reuse, or students
weight behind the idea. The E.U. launched its ac- upcycling (especially in its important forestry in-
tion plan for the transition to a circular economy dustry), urges public procurements that rely on re-
in 2015, then updated it in 2020 as part of the cycled and repurposed materials, and seeks to curb
Green Deal to include initiatives that encourage dramatically the amount of waste going to landill.
companies to design products—from laptops to But from the beginning, the country of 5.5 mil-
jeans—so they last longer and can be more easily lion has also focused closely on education, training
repaired. In February, the European Parliament its younger generations to think of the economy
passed a resolution demanding additional mea- diferently than their parents and grandparents
sures that would allow it to adopt a fully circular do. “People think it’s just about recycling,” says
carbon-neutral economy by 2050. Some mem- Nani Pajunen, a sustainability expert at Sitra, the
ber states, including the Netherlands, have also public innovation fund that has spearheaded Fin-
drafted similar plans at the national level. land’s circular conversion. “But really, it’s about
67
ECONOMY

rethinking everything—products, material devel-

opment, how we consume.” To make changes at
every level of society, Pajunen argues, education is
key—getting every Finn to understand the need for
a circular economy, and how they can be part of it.
A pilot program to help teachers incorporate
the notion into curriculums in 2017 “just snow-
balled,” says Pajunen. “By the end of the two
years, 2,500 teachers around the country had
joined the network—far more than we had di-
rectly funded.”
Since then, studying the circular economy has
taken on a life of its own, starting with the young-
est. In December, Neulanen kindergarten direc-
tor Liisa Woitsch sat on the loor with some of her
young charges, a broken wooden chair, and a large
cartoon cutout of a fox. Unscrewing a dangling leg
from the chair, Woitsch asked the children, “Do we
just throw it away now, or can you think of any-
thing else that can be done with it?” One boy clam-
ored to the seat and, pounding rhythmically, de-
clared it a drum. Another brought the detached leg
to his lips. “It can be a trumpet!”
It’s an uplifting change from the catastrophe and
dystopia that often characterizes education about
sustainable development, says Anssi Almgren, who
helped design the curriculum for the city of Hel-
sinki. “Children have so many great ideas, and we
wanted to enable them to think about solutions.” △
In a nation whose education system, consid- family ’s 100-hectare farm, where they primarily A staf meeting
ered by many to be the best in the world, rests grew grain, having previously raised cattle. “The at Swappie,
heavily on experiential learning (and not at all soil had become more compacted, and we were in Helsinki on
on homework, which is practically nonexistent), using more and more fertilizers. I could see the Dec. 13, focuses
the solutions-based approach of studying circular problem, but I didn’t know how to solve it.” on refurbishing
economy adapts to all levels of formal education. When she learned of a course in regenerative used phones
In one online course developed for high school, for agriculture organized by an environmental NGO
example, students engage in an advanced version called the Baltic Sea Action Group, she enrolled.
of Woitsch’s kindergarten class, taking apart bro- She soon realized she could help tackle the climate
ken items like ballpoint pens or electronics and crisis and biodiversity loss on the farm itself.
mulling over new purposes for their materials. A year ago, she bought out her parents and
By the time kids reach university, their ground- began changing the farm’s model. She still grows
ing in circularity is strong enough that they can wheat and barley, but when she plants those grains
apply the principle to advanced research. At in the spring, she seeds them with 15 varieties of
Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, stu- cover crops to help rebuild the depleted soil and
dents collaborate on projects designed to solve support biodiversity on the farm. She’s also intro-
real-world problems. One group on an engineer- ducing new crops into rotation, and recently added
ing course spent the fall investigating how Hel- six cows whose only job at present is to eat: by
sinki could foster neighborhoods where individual grazing and fertilizing the soil with their manure,
blocks could—by establishing repair workshops, they too contribute to the health of the land. “Be-
gardens, and composting sites—build their own fore, I was only thinking about yield—how much
mini circular economies. can I harvest in this one ield,” she says. But now
The concept is also making its way into adult her perspective has broadened to include putting
education. In 2018, Marja Oesch was trying to ig- back as much as taking out. “Every time I have to
ure out what to do with her life. She had grown up make a decision now,” Oesch says, “I think about
on a farm 88 km north of Helsinki and wasn’t con- how it afects the soil and the organisms in it, and
vinced that farming held much opportunity, either down the line that will bring other changes that I
for herself or for the environment. “It was basi- think will make the farm healthier. But the most
cally a monoculture,” the 26-year-old says of her important change is your mindset.”
68 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 ◁
Motherboards
of old iPhones
gathered by the
company

Is FInland as a whole achieving that particular Helsinki facility, from receiving the used phones to
transformation? By some measures, yes: a recent diagnosing and repairing them to sending out the
poll showed that 82% of Finns believe the circu- perfectly functioning refurbished ones and mar-
lar economy creates new jobs, and several Finn- keting them through traditional advertising and a
ish cities have developed road maps of their own. well-targeted inluencer campaign. The company’s
Its forestry industry has taken steps to reinvent holistic approach is working: it has increased its
itself, a key move as a full 28% of domestic energy revenue from half a million euros in its irst year
consumption now comes from wood-based fuels. to 98 million in 2020, and augmented its capacity
Renewables—including wood, though burning it with a second factory in Estonia. Many of its 1,100
does release carbon—surpassed fossil fuels for the employees come from around the world, drawn,
irst time in 2020. Marttinen says, “by the sense of purpose.” And al-
Meanwhile, the number of successful young though the company’s research suggests that many
companies employing circular measures seems to of its customers buy Swappies simply because they
expand every month. Many are working to convert get guaranteed quality for a lower price, for some
sidestreams from the forestry industry into new of its clientele that same sense of purpose has made
materials like bioplastics, paperboard, and textiles. owning a Swappie cooler than getting a new phone.
But in the birthplace of Nokia, just as many seem It’s not all small startups either. The state-
to be aimed at tech. Swappie, a company that re- owned Fortum—the country’s leading energy
furbishes iPhones, for example, is one of Finland’s producer and, by revenue, Finland’s largest
most successful recent startups. In 2016, its found- company—is already working within a circular
ers, then all in their 20s, embarked on a mission to model. It transforms waste into energy through in-
make used phones—which then made up only 5% of cineration, as well as into new materials: discarded
the global market—as common as used cars (which household plastic, for example, is processed at its
make up 50% of all cars sold). “After researching plant in Riihimaki into clean pellets that can be
the market, we realized that the main obstacle was remade into any kind of plastic.
quality,” CEO Sami Marttinen explains. “People The company currently is a major greenhouse-
didn’t trust the quality of refurbishers. So that’s gas emitter, largely because of its fossil-fuel-
what we built the company on.” energy subsidiary, Uniper, but is looking ahead to
Swappie handles every step in-house at its the endgame of the transition to a carbon-neutral
69
ECONOMY

economy. Once fossil fuels are phased out and economy, but notes that older Finns can be more
replaced with renewables, Kalle Saarimaa, vice skeptical. “Finland was very poor well into the
president of Fortum Recycling and Waste, ex- 1950s, but it developed very quickly after that,”
plains, the raw materials for energy will no lon- she says, with generations of Finns focused on ex-
ger be scarce; sun and wind, unlike coal and oil, panding industry. “It’s very hard for people to un-
are free. But something that is abundant today— derstand that their lives’ work, or the life’s work
cheap plastic and other hydrocarbons made from of their parents, could in any way be a bad thing.”
petroleum—will then become scarce. “Where are Rejstrom inhabits the dilemma: she sits on the
those hydrocarbons going to come from when fos- board of her family’s company, which produces in-
sil fuels are phased out?” he asks. “A lot of peo- jection molding. But she is also the founder and
ple right now are working to replace them with CEO of Spark Sustainability, which a few months
bioplastics. But what happens to bio if you do ago launched an app called Carbon Donut. It al-
that? There won’t be any trees left on the planet.” lows users to track their carbon footprint, tailors
(Wood is a leading source of bioplastic.) Instead, suggestions to them for how to curb it, and links
the company is developing innovative technol- them to circular businesses that can help. The app
ogy to generate those hydrocarbons from the car- so far has 15,000 users, most of whom, she says,
bon dioxide emitted in the energy-production are urban, highly educated, and in their 20s. “They
process. “We see it as the future of recycling,” are the generation that learned about circular econ-
Saarimaa says—“the way to get carbon circular.” omy and climate change and all the other environ-
mental problems in school, and have a diferent ap-
Finland still has a long way to go. Although proach to nature than older generations who saw it
the amount of waste going to landill has de- more in terms of its monetary potential.”
creased so dramatically in the Finland is seeking to posi-
past two decades as to be al- tion itself as a model for other
most negligible, Finns are ac- countries; to that end, Sitra has
tually producing more waste ‘We’re better at published guidelines to help
per capita than they were a few other nations develop their own
years ago—they’re just turning recycling, but we circular-economy road maps,
it into something else. “In that
sense, we are still living in the
have not been and has begun collaborating with
the African Development Bank
linear model,” says Sitra’s proj- able to turn the to further steps toward circu-
ect director for circular econ-
omy, Kari Herlevi. “We’re bet-
tide fully.’ larity across that continent. But
its unique combination of small
ter at recycling, but we have not —KARI HERLEVI, CIRCULAR- population, political will, a mus-
ECONOMY PROJECT DIRECTOR
been able to turn the tide fully.” cular entrepreneurial culture,
In downtown Helsinki, the and that strong education sys-
three chef-owners of Nolla have tem suggests that any country
discovered much the same. When they irst opened seeking to follow in its footsteps is going to need
the restaurant in 2018, they trumpeted its zero- to look beyond merely phasing out landills and
waste philosophy, with drinking glasses made from funding cool startups to a bigger, more holistic pic-
elegantly repurposed juice bottles and a popular ture. “From the feedback we’ve received, it’s clear
dip lavored with a syrup made from the kitch- that the education part resonates internationally,”
en’s vegetable trim. Cooks had to track any dis- says Sitra’s Herlevi. “And from the beginning we
card that couldn’t be repurposed—including food have thought of it as the backbone of our strategy.
that came back from the dining room uneaten on But [education] is part of the overall Finnish way
each plate—before emptying it into the composter. of operating, and it’s not like you can just take it
But they discovered that the public wasn’t neces- and implement it as a separate thing.”
sarily with them. “They would think that we were Nor is it a strategy that works overnight. Even
cooking with waste, or that we were going to feed in Finland, the focus on changing a society by ed-
them food that had gone bad,” co-owner Luka ucating its young takes time. It worked that way
Balac says. “So now we’re just a restaurant. We for Tina and Karin Harms. A lawyer who identi-
are still doing all the same things, but if you don’t ies herself as “very aware of sustainability issues,”
know about it”—gesturing around the packed din- Tina, 47, was unfamiliar with the term circular
ing room, Balac estimates that only about 60% of economy, even though, as someone who restores
their guests do—“you’re just going to think you furniture as a hobby and has long tried to reduce
had a nice meal.” her family’s consumption, she was already practic-
Entrepreneur Amanda Rejstrom has seen a ing it in some ways.
major recent shift toward the idea of a circular Her middle child Karin, age 19, on the other
70 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 △
hand, says she has been familiar with the circu- need to contribute to ighting climate change.” Cattle help
lar “practically all my life.” She irst learned of Tina recalls balking at irst. Although the family Marja Oesch
it in primary school and had the message rein- did recycle its newspaper and bottles, separating practice
forced in middle school—her class went to Yri- plastics required an extra efort that she found in- regeneration
tyskyla, for one—and it forms part of the cur- convenient. But today, they have what she laugh- on her Finnish
riculum at her current high school. Like most ingly describes as “virtually a plastic recycling cen- farm, putting
back as much as
of her friends, she has a refurbished phone and ter” in their basement. “I think that if you have she takes out
buys most of her clothes at secondhand shops. a teenager with very strong feelings about some-
She’s also vegan, and has persuaded the rest thing,” she relects, “it’s very demotivating if we
of the family to recycle. “We started ive years older ones don’t show that we’re ready to make
ago, and before that we weren’t doing it,” Karin the extra efort to change.” —With reporting by
says. “But then I said we really need to; we all EloisE Barry/london 
71
 NATION

THE FIGHT
FOR A
TOBACCO-FREE
GENERATION
A Massachusetts town passed a irst-of-its-kind
law meant to phase out smoking forever
BY JAMIE DUCHARME

PHOTOGR APHS BY CODY O’LOUGHLIN FOR TIME

Owner Elias Audy
at Brookline’s
Village Mobil,
which displays
the town’s new
tobacco-sales law
NATION

AS
Katharine Silbaugh sees it, one mark of
a good public policy is that it’s both big
and small: big in its potential impact,
small in its disruption to people’s lives.
Silbaugh, a lawyer and one of the 240
elected “town meeting members” who
make up local government in the pic-
turesque Boston suburb of Brookline,
thinks she’s managed to thread that nee-
dle with a recently passed ordinance un-
like any other in the country.
The ordinance, co-sponsored by Sil-
baugh and Anthony Ishak, a pharmacist
and fellow town meeting member, ties
the right to buy tobacco not to age but
to birth date. At the federal level, Amer-
icans can buy cigarettes, vapes, and ci-
gars when they turn 21. But in Brook-
line, anyone born after Jan. 1, 2000,
cannot legally buy tobacco or vap-
ing products, not even as time passes
and they turn 22 or 30 or 50—the goal
being to keep younger generations from
adopting a habit that may well kill them.
Massachusetts attorney general Maura
Healey’s oice signed of on the policy
in July 2021, and it went into efect that
September.
The change is small, Silbaugh says,
because “not one person who can pur- Their policy has faced opposition from △
chase [tobacco] can no longer purchase local business owners, Brookline’s local Lawmakers in Brookline, Mass., a
it .. . And on the retailer side, they will government executive board, and even wealthy suburb of Boston, want to
only lose new business, and so incre- the town’s recently departed public- make tobacco use obsolete
mentally.” But the change is also big, health director. Ten days before the
because Silbaugh and Ishak believe it law took efect, a group of convenience- with few beneits and well-documented
can be a blueprint for other communi- store owners iled a lawsuit against the harms. In the other corner are those
ties that want to snuf out smoking. town, arguing the policy louts Massa- who believe tobacco—like alcohol and
“Brookline doesn’t control the to- chusetts state law (which allows for to- other potentially dangerous products—
bacco market,” Silbaugh acknowl- bacco sales at age 21), unfairly penal- should remain legally available to adults
edges. But single towns have helped izes their shops and arbitrarily denies who choose to use it. The winner of the
spark big changes before. More than rights to some adults. As of press time, ight could help deine the trajectory of
a decade ago, Needham, Mass., a town the lawsuit was still pending. one of the world’s most inluential and
less than 10 miles away from Brookline, The two sides are ighting about lucrative industries.
became the irst place in the country to more than local politics. In essence, In 2002, health-equity specialist
raise the legal age of tobacco sale to 21. they’re sparring over the future of Tamu Green met with C. Everett Koop,
That’s now federal law. Bans on plastic tobacco, a substance that tens of mil- a former U.S. surgeon general known
bags also began at the local level, before lions of Americans use despite the fact for his aggressive tobacco-control work.
being adopted by some states. that it kills almost half a million people Green loated the idea of an all-out to-
Unsurprisingly, not everyone wants in the U.S. every year. In one corner are bacco ban, to which—as she remembers
Silbaugh and Ishak’s plan to follow the those, like Silbaugh and Ishak, who be- it—the late Koop responded that smok-
same path to national prominence. lieve it’s past time to outlaw a product ers would “riot in the streets.” That got
74 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 Around the same time, a separate Winterville, a municipality of 1,200
group of researchers published a paper people and two convenience stores that
in the journal Tobacco Control. They sell tobacco, “not wanting such a prece-
were pitching essentially the same idea: dent to be set, [the tobacco industry] re-
phasing out legal tobacco sales to any- ally came out as forcefully as they could
one born after Jan. 1, 2000, with the muster,” Farmer says.
goal of gradually eliminating tobacco- It’s not shocking that TFG inally
related addiction, disease, death, and persevered in Brookline, a tony town of
health care costs. about 60,000 people where more than
Co-author A.J. Berrick, a mathemat- 87% of 2020 voters went for President
ics professor who joined the tobacco- Joe Biden, the median household income
control movement out of personal is almost $120,000, and fewer than 7%
interest, believed any successful anti- of adult residents and 5% of teenagers
smoking policy had to prevent young smoke in the irst place. Brookline was
people from becoming addicted, rather also a front runner in implementing
than persuading current users to un- smoking bans in bars and restaurants,
dertake the notoriously diicult pro- and in 2019 banned the sale of all la-
cess of quitting. In theory, laws that set vored tobacco and vapor products.
a minimum age for tobacco purchase
serve that same goal—but “for laws to EvEn in BrooklinE, however, TFG
work, they have to be consistent with faced a rocky road. As an opening bid,
the psychology of people who are af- co-sponsors Silbaugh and Ishak pro-
fected,” Berrick says. That’s where age- posed a cutof birth date of Jan. 1, 1976,
of-purchase laws fell apart, in his eyes. because some research shows that quit-
They made smoking seem like some- ting smoking is most beneicial and de-
thing that was acceptable for people sirable among smokers in their 40s and
of a certain age, when in reality it was younger. But that policy would have
dangerous for everyone. Perhaps worse, meant adult smokers who had been
these laws (with the help of industry legally buying cigarettes for decades
advertising) made tobacco seem like no longer could, making it highly dis-
something mature and adult, something ruptive for both individuals and busi-
that would appeal to teenagers who also nesses. They eventually adjusted their
wanted to be those things. proposal to a date that worked better
The vast majority of smokers start by with current age-of-purchase laws:
age 18, which suggested to Berrick that Jan. 1, 2000. That way, the only people
current youth prevention approaches who would lose the right to buy tobacco
her thinking: What if there were a way weren’t working. Picking a birth date would be those who turned 21 in the
to end tobacco sales without upsetting after which no one could buy tobacco short window between the ordinance’s
smokers? would solve those problems, Berrick passage and implementation.
Eventually, she and her then hus- thought. If a progressively smaller por- That wasn’t an instant hit, either.
band Paul Nolfo, who works in tion of the population were able to The town executive board didn’t rec-
substance-use prevention, landed on a smoke with each passing year, the habit ommend passing the ordinance, cit-
potential solution: a cutof date, after would eventually lose its “rite of pas- ing concern for local business owners
which no one would ever age into legal sage” allure and become obsolete. The and discomfort with preventing only
tobacco purchase. Those who were al- policy would, ideally, create a tobacco- some adults from buying what is, al-
ready smoking legally could go about free generation, a name some advocates most everywhere in the U.S., a legal
their business, while young people who now shorten to “TFG.” product. Even Brookline’s director of
(hopefully) hadn’t yet had their irst After Berrick’s paper was published, health and human services at the time,
cigarette never would. Around 2010, the idea gained traction in the Philip- Swannie Jett, opposed the plan, because
they began pitching the idea to public- pines and in the Australian state of Tas- he didn’t feel the petitioners had ade-
health and tobacco-control groups, as mania. In the U.S., Mark Farmer, a town quately researched its potential impact
well as lawmakers in their home state councilman from tiny Winterville, Ga., on businesses and the public. Jett also
of California. “Folks weren’t ready for almost drummed up enough support for questioned whether such a dramatic ap-
it,” Green says. The couple also got the the idea to make it law in his town in proach was necessary in a town where
sense that tobacco-industry funding 2018, but says his fellow elected oicials only a single-digit percentage of resi-
and inluence made many people ner- got spooked when tobacco-industry dents smoke.
vous to push for a world without ciga- lobbyists pushed back. Even though “Don’t make it symbolic,” Jett tells
rettes. The idea izzled. the policy would have applied only to TIME, relecting on his thoughts when
75
NATION

the proposal came across his desk. “My

job is to reduce morbidity and mortal-
ity. We already have low rates of smok-
ing tobacco. I don’t think it would do
anything.”
Indeed, it’s not entirely clear how im-
pactful Brookline’s TFG law could be,
owing to both the town’s low smoking
rates and its proximity to areas where
tobacco remains legal for all adults.
Some research has shown that young
adults are less likely to smoke when it’s
inconvenient, either because of bans or
taxes. But Brookline’s law may not even
make smoking particularly inconve-
nient. The town is surrounded on three
sides by the city of Boston, meaning res-
idents 21 and older can, in some cases,
walk a few blocks across the border to
pick up cigarettes or vapes.
Town meeting member Marissa
Vogt voted against the proposal when
it came up in November 2020. Though
Vogt says she agrees with the spirit of
the plan and would have supported a
townwide ban on tobacco, she felt the
ordinance amounted to age discrimi-
nation. “Your birth date is one of those
things that you cannot change about
yourself,” Vogt says. She felt uneasy
about permanently splitting the adult
population into cans and cannots based
on something uncontrollable.
Daniel Farbman, an assistant pro- △ for Juul pods or Marlboros, then end
fessor at Boston College Law School, Anthony Ishak and Katharine up buying bottled water and snacks.
says that arbitrariness—a dividing line Silbaugh co-sponsored Brookline’s Customers aren’t going to split their
based on something as random as birth tobacco-free-generation law business between his store and the one
date—may be a bigger legal issue than down the street that sells cigarettes to
age discrimination, since the ages of anyone 21 and older, he argues; they’re
people afected by the law will change sign-of hasn’t stopped Brookline retail- just going to buy everything at the
over time. “Whenever you pass a regu- ers from suing the town over its law, ar- other store.
lation like this, it’s a burden on people’s guing that it is discriminatory and Somewhat perversely, says Iqbal, a
freedoms,” he says. “When you’re doing should not overshadow Massachusetts statewide tobacco ban would be eas-
that, you always have to ask if the gov- standards. Fahd “Sunny” Iqbal, one of ier to swallow, because it would at least
ernment has a good reason to do it.” If the plaintifs, owns a Sunoco gas station be consistent. That way, he wouldn’t
courts perceive the cutof date as ran- near the Brookline-Boston border. For have to watch business go to competi-
dom, they may decide it’s not a good him, all the TFG law does is send poten- tors who happened to open their shops
enough reason to limit access to a tra- tial customers down the road. blocks away from his.
ditionally legal product. While Silbaugh and Ishak say one On that front, Iqbal, Silbaugh,
Nonetheless, the proposal passed at of TFG’s selling points is its minimal and Ishak share a rare slice of com-
Brookline’s November 2020 town meet- impact on local businesses, Iqbal dis- mon ground. Brookline’s TFG archi-
ing by a vote of 139-78, with 11 mem- agrees. In the regulation’s irst few tects would also like to see it expand
bers abstaining. It went into efect in years, perhaps he won’t lose too many irst statewide, then nationally. Sil-
September 2021 after a review by the customers. But as the eligible tobacco- baugh insists the law will save lives in
state attorney general’s oice, which buying population shrinks, so will his Brookline, but she’s also aware that her
concluded that towns can implement customer base. Tobacco is lucrative on town’s tobacco market is tiny. The or-
tobacco-control policies that are stricter its own, but it’s also what he calls a pur- dinance’s real utility—its real promise
than state law. But even the state AG’s chase driver. Someone might come in for supporters and its real red lag for
76 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 cigarettes while someone born a few
days later can’t—especially when Brook-
line boasts a popular marijuana dispen-
sary that serves anyone 21 and older.
“Legal products are legal because
we make them so,” Bostic ires back.
“Slavery was legal, and then it wasn’t.”
The U.S. government’s treatment of
asbestos—a mineral iber once com-
monly used in construction and con-
sumer goods—may be a more reasonable
comparison than slavery. Though there
is no outright ban on asbestos, multi-
ple government agencies enforce regu-
lations on its use and handling given its
links to cancer and other diseases.
Though it may sound it, it’s not to-
tally implausible that tobacco is headed
for a similar fate. In December 2021, on
the heels of Brookline’s law, New Zea-
land’s government—which had already
pledged to make the country smoke-free
by 2025—announced its intent to pass a
TFG policy in 2022, giving the concept
arguably its biggest boost yet. And in a
recent study of Australian adults, just
over half—and almost 32% of current
smokers—said they’d support an even-
tual phaseout of cigarette sales. Finland
has also promised to go virtually tobacco-
free by 2040. Even in the U.S., where
individual liberty is sacrosanct, a quar-
ter of adults said in a 2018 Gallup poll
adversaries—is in setting a precedent. △ that smoking should be banned outright.
If Brookline, Mass., can do it, Any- Fahd “Sunny” Iqbal is suing Clearly, that’s a long way from a major-
where, U.S.A., can do it too. Brookline, arguing its law will hurt ity, but it’s up from 11% in the 1990s.
his convenience-store business Whether its residents know it or not,
TFG hasn’T made many waves yet, a single town in Massachusetts could
even within Brookline. One woman play a role in determining whether that
working behind the counter of a Brook- aggressive action against tobacco. Bev- number keeps climbing or stalls out. If
line head shop hadn’t heard of the pol- erly Hills and Manhattan Beach, Calif., winds of change in Brookline spread the
icy until asked about it by TIME in have both banned its sale (with very few seeds for future TFG laws elsewhere,
mid-November. exceptions), and other areas around the the tobacco-endgame movement could
But advocates already see the bu- country have passed restrictions on la- gain momentum. Ishak says he’s already
colic suburb as a test case for what are vored tobacco products. But advocates ielded calls from local representatives
known as “sunset” or “endgame” laws— like Bostic see more promise in TFG in western New York who are interested
policies meant to eventually make com- laws, because they’re more palatable. in learning more about whether the con-
bustible tobacco obsolete. “We have an Instead of ripping away cigarettes from cept might work for their communities.
industry that sells a product that kills current users, Prohibition-style, they It’s not yet clear, though, whether it
when used as intended and is highly focus on future impact while leaving can even work in Brookline, one of the
addictive,” says Chris Bostic, policy di- existing smokers alone. most progressive towns in one of the
rector for the antismoking group Ac- Of course, they also limit adult ac- most progressive states in the country,
tion on Smoking and Health. But that cess to products that are, at the state where tobacco is a minimal piece of the
hasn’t been enough to totally discourage and federal levels, perfectly legal. Adam local culture and economy. If the ordi-
smoking, and in Bostic’s view, it’s time Ponte, the attorney representing Brook- nance’s legal challengers and critics win,
to take away the “free pass” the tobacco line business owners, calls it “the dei- or if the law’s impact proves minimal,
industry has been given to kill. nition of arbitrary” that someone born the whole idea could fade out, ashed like
Brookline is not alone in taking on Dec. 31, 1999, can buy a pack of a kicked cigarette. 
77
SOCIETY
Dog
Runs
BY ANDREW BLUM

Sheryl Blancato
of Second Chance
Animal Services
carries 2-month-old
Presley, who just lew
from Mississippi to
Massachusetts
PHOTOGR APHS BY EVAN
ANGELASTRO FOR TIME
SOCIETY

The dusty white cargo plane stood out years, the ASPCA has poured resources into its
“relocation” program, which in March will cel-
ebrate its 200,000th animal moved. But it is far
among the gleaming corporate jets, as did from alone.
These pipelines of adoptable animals—
its passengers: 48 barking dogs, newly primarily, but not exclusively, moving from south
to north—have become a cultural phenomenon in
arrived at the private air terminal at their own right, and a key part of a broader trans-
formation of companion-animal welfare. The
Hanscom Field, outside of Boston. ASPCA’s program may be the biggest and most
organized, but dogs (and, to a lesser extent, cats)
They had left Mississippi that morning with move by all sorts of other means. There are ad hoc
their health certiicates taped to their kennels. All bands of volunteers, organizing on Facebook and
week, the staf at Oktibbeha County Humane Soci- Petinder, who cover their back seats with tow-
ety (OCHS), in Starkville, Miss., had been getting els and rendezvous at rest stops, passing animals
them ready, giving them their shots, testing their along every couple hundred miles. In big cities and
temperaments, and color-coding each crate for its their suburbs, nonproits have sprung up to part-
destination: red for Second Chance Animal Services ner with overcrowded Southern shelters, hire a
in North Brookield, Mass.; gray for the Animal driver and load up a van with a few dozen animals
Rescue League of Boston; and blue for the MSPCA, every month or more. During the COVID-19 pan-
an independent animal-welfare organization. demic, many of these groups became overwhelmed
On the tarmac, representatives from each jos- with demand in some states, leading to months-
tled around the animals like vacationers at bag- long waiting lists and stif competition among
gage claim. Danielle Bowes, a staf member at Sec- adopters. That spurred a surprising fourth cate-
ond Chance, checked her list. She was looking for gory: veritable smugglers, who saw an opportunity
two tiny puppies named Tiger and Presley; black in loading up a horse trailer with the cutest strays
‘ANIMAL and brown 4-month-olds Bandit, Josie, and Wells; and driving north (leaving the nonproits with the
an adult lab mix, Trent; and a dozen more, rang- sick and less desirable animals).
RELOCATION’ ing from 8 lb. to 40 lb., from 8 weeks to 4 years It is a good time to be an American dog. In the
old. When she found Bravo, a 1-year-old collie and 1970s, as many as 20 million dogs and cats were
IS NOT ONLY American blue heeler mix, she cooed into his cage, euthanized each year. That number has declined
ABOUT MEETING “Hi, Pretty, you’re going to go quick!” Back at Sec- precipitously. The ASPCA now estimates 390,000
ond Chance, the dogs will quarantine for 48 hours, dogs and 530,000 cats are euthanized each year,
DEMAND FOR per state law, before they go up for adoption. If down from 2.6 million as recently as 2011. That’s
past experience is any guide—and transports like still too many—especially when a way to further
PUPPIES, BUT this arrive nearly every week all over the coun- reduce the number is at hand. Euthanasia was once
ALSO BUILDING try, by plane, truck, and van—they will be gone seen as an inevitability: there were just too many
in a few days, becoming the newest of the esti- animals. But a combination of factors—cultural,
THE CAPACITY mated 90 million canines living with U.S. families. medical, and political—has changed that. More
There is not a dog shortage in America—not people want mutts, rebranded “rescues.” Fewer
TO HELP ALL yet, at least. But there are stark geographic dif- animals are born each year, thanks to broader
ANIMALS ferences in supply and demand. Massachusetts spay and neuter programs, often dictated by law,
needs more dogs, and Mississippi has too many. and improved surgical techniques. And more are
The same is true of Delaware and Oklahoma, being moved, which helps save those animals, but
Minnesota and Louisiana, New York and Tennes- also opens up space and time to care for others left
see, and Washington and New Mexico, among behind. For shelter staf, who sufer from a dis-
other states. To compensate, sophisticated dog- proportionately high rate of mental-health prob-
relocation networks have sprung up over the past lems, nothing matters more than keeping up with
decade, transporting dogs and cats from states their animals’ needs. Rather than being beaten
with too many to states with too few. Mostly, it’s down by the incessant necessity of euthanizing
a tactical problem: “How do we connect those the unwanted, they are buoyed by a steady low
shelters that have too many animals and are at of adoptions.
risk of euthanasia simply because they were born Money helps, of course. The geographic dispari-
there, to those shelters where these animals are ties that lead one place to have too many dogs and
gonna ly of the shelves?” says Matt Bershadker, another too few are primarily fueled by a diference
CEO of the ASPCA, the New York–based animal- in resources. Shelters in heavily populated cities
welfare giant, which sponsored and organized and suburbs beneit from well-funded population-
the light arriving at Hanscom. Over the past ive control programs and large pools of potential
80 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 adopters. Shelters in rural areas struggle with On the move
excess animals, and communities with broader Among the thousands of organizations
economic burdens. Puppies lying private may relocating pets from overpopulated parts of the
seem excessive—the light into Hanscom cost the U.S. to areas of high demand, the ASPCA runs
ASPCA approximately $30,000—but the kennels the largest nationwide network. Here are its
on the tarmac among the corporate jets are an indi- current source and destination states:
cator of the broader success of the animal-welfare
movement, and the enthusiasm of its donors. The
easy problems are nearly solved; the hard ones re- SOURCE DESTINATION BOTH
quire a new approach. “Animal relocation” is not
MOST
only about meeting demand for puppies, but also MOST ANIMALS
ANIMALS
building the capacity to help all animals. SENT
RECEIVED
PA
Four-month-old The ASPCA-sponsored light exempliies an or- LA
siblings Zelda, left, ganized efort to connect disparate communities in
and Zara, right, pursuit of a common goal. It is a living, breathing—
traveled together barking, panting—geographic arbitrage. But by
from Mississippi to treating these lying puppies as points of connection
Massachusetts between communities, like the knots in a net, the
issue of excess animals can be addressed. It’s a rec-
ognition that some problems, even ones that bridge
red states and blue states, can be solved together.

When Michele Anderson first volunteered at

Animals 42,296
the Oktibbeha County Humane Society, its chal- relocated 34,552
lenges could be measured with a simple formula. by ASPCA 28,444
Like many shelters, it calculated its “live-release
rate”: the number of animals that left alive, divided 529
by the total number that came in through the door.
2014 ’15 ’16 ’17 ’18 ’19 ’20 ’21
In 2009, it hovered around 50%. “I remember if
we had a cat that sneezed, we didn’t keep the cat,” SOURCE: ASPCA

81
 From left:
Presley, 8 weeks;
Pookie, 10 weeks;
and Hazel,
18 months, will
be adopted
immediately

Anderson recalls. New animals illed the door of hundred. “But it really wasn’t doing anything,”
the shelter every day, and there was neither the Anderson says. It wasn’t addressing the broader
space to house them nor the money to pay the staf challenge in the community.
to take care of them. But Anderson saw a way to ‘INSTEAD OCHS was far better resourced than many of its
change that. Mississippi neighbors. It had the social capital of
OCHS occupies a tidy brick house on the in- OF RESCUE the university to draw on, and a contract with the
dustrial edge of Starkville, the thriving home of city of Starkville to take in strays. By many mea-
WAGGIN’
Mississippi State University. Inside, every inch is sures, Mississippi is the poorest state in the U.S.,
devoted to animals and their care, with barking COMING DOWN and in nearby communities, “animal control” was
dogs and prowling cats behind every door and sup- more likely to be a fenced-in area alongside the
plies stacked in every corner. Outside, a fenced-in FOR FIVE town dump or behind the sherif’s department.
green-grass backyard gives the dogs a place to play. OCHS had professors of veterinary medicine ad-
ANIMALS, WE
But the social heart is the iron bench on the little vising on best practices, but places like Winston
porch out front, often busy with chatting veteri- WERE ABLE TO County, 25 miles away, struggled to provide basic
nary students from the university and volunteers. necessities to the animals in its care.
It was there that Anderson, who had joined the FILL THE ENTIRE Anderson, who works as an administrator at
shelter’s board of directors, oversaw the arrival of the university, saw a way for OCHS to “step up
TRUCK.’
a transformative visitor: the “Rescue Waggin’,” a our game”: they would transport in more animals.
green van with a giant puppy decal on the side. It At irst, it seemed anathema: the goal was to have
belonged to PetSmart Charities, the philanthropic MICHELE fewer. But if OCHS could act as a hub, consolidat-
ANDERSON,
arm of the pet-store chain. The irst year it came OCHS
ing the work it took to prepare animals for trans-
to Oktibbeha, in 2009, it picked up 40 animals, a port, it could reap the rewards of volume. “Instead
handful at a time, and transported them to places of Rescue Waggin’ coming down for ive animals,
like Kansas City and Chicago. Over the next few we were able to ill the entire truck,” says Anderson.
years, the Rescue Waggin’ raised that to several They began working with partner organizations to
82 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
bring in more dogs, and a growing list of trans- (and still has) an endless stream of new arrivals,
port partners to ship dogs out. From 2009 to by the mid-2000s, Second Chance began seeing
2019, OCHS’ live-release rate skyrocketed from far fewer. Blancato started driving down overnight
50% to 95%; rather than euthanizing every other to Virginia or Maryland, returning with a full van.
animal, it found homes for all but one in 20. Last ‘NO SOONER She saw how the adorable new arrivals increased
year, the little shelter sent out 1,842 dogs and 844 foot traic at the shelter, which in turn increased
cats on transports, about two-thirds of which came THAN WE GET the likelihood that the harder-to-love, or the older-
in from partner organizations. “If we didn’t have A COUPLE OF and-larger, would ind homes.
transport, it would be devastating for us and the Blancato’s experience tracked a broader trans-
groups we work with,” says Anderson. “It’s trans- KENNELS OPEN, formation in American dog culture. Animal wel-
formed the lives of these animals, and the people fare used to be animal control: the dog catcher
who are dealing with these animals—because now HERE COMES of lore. (It’s how Blancato got her start.) Pri-
they have some sort of hope.” A NEWBIE! IT’S vate shelters began to pop up in the 1980s and
’90s. Petinder, the ubiquitous classiieds site
On the Other end, there are plenty of shelters LIKE, WHO LET for adoptable dogs, was founded in 1996—right
eager to receive them. Sheryl Blancato, founder on the heels of Craigslist and Match, the year be-
and executive director of Second Chance Animal THE DOGS OUT?’ fore—and similarly revolutionized how people
Services—one of the shelters that met the light in found pets. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina galva-
Massachusetts—remembers, around 2007, when CAMILLE nized animal welfare, as evacuees’ despair over
her kennels began to empty out. “We noticed that COTTON, their abandoned pets showed how much com-
OCHS
we started to have space,” Blancato recalls. From panion animals meant to people. In response,
the street, the Massachusetts and Mississippi fa- Congress passed the PETS Act in 2006, which re-
cilities don’t seem that diferent; like its Southern quired local governments to accommodate fam-
counterpart, Second Chance occupies a converted ily pets in their disaster planning. In 2007, the
house on the edge of town. But whereas OCHS had ASPCA aired its famous “Angel” commercial,
83
with singer Sarah MacLachlan asking viewers to “Transport is bailing water out of your base-
give a “second chance” to an “animal in a shel- ment,” he says. “Spay/neuter is turning the faucet
ter right now.” Astonishingly, the ad alone raised of. You have to do both.”
$30 million for the ASPCA in its irst two years,
and helped cement the image of a “rescue dog” On a crisp Mississippi afternOOn with a
as a virtuous good, rather than a nuisance. By the deep blue sky, Camille Cotton sits in front of
time Instagram launched in 2010, and the old- two computer monitors inside her oice, a little
est millennials turned 30 and began adopting red brick building at the edge of the OCHS park-
their own animals (and giving them their own ac- ing lot. Think PawsiTive, says the plaque above
counts), #AdoptDontShop was a movement. In her desk. Each week, sometimes several times a
the 1990s, fewer than 10% of dogs were adopted week, Cotton organizes the transports. She starts
from shelters; today, that number has grown to Danielle with a blank spreadsheet and begins assembling
nearly 30%. Bowes, a care her manifest, drawing on the animals waiting at
That steady increase in demand coincided with and adoption OCHS for their ticket out, or checking in with any
a decrease in supply. Around the same time, in the counselor at of three dozen partner organizations to see who
late 2000s, veterinarians launched a concerted Second Chance, might be “transport eligible.” When Cotton texts,
efort to spay and neuter more dogs and cats. moves Zelda they reply immediately. If she takes their dog, it
The strategy was in part technique: vets devel- from the crate frees up a crowded kennel, with the assurance that
oped ways of performing the surgery faster. They she lew in the animal will go on to a good life. “They’re all
could set up assembly-line clinics, bringing down pets; they’re just homeless,” Cotton says. “They
the cost per animal. But it was also law: 32 states just need somewhere to go.”
now require that an animal be sterilized before it Some come with scars; others with stories.
is released from a shelter. It exponentially reduced Elmer Fudge, a 1-year-old hound mix, was the
the number of animals born outside of deliberate largest on Cotton’s list that day, at 49 lb. He’d ar-
breeding. Puppies became scarce. rived at OCHS a couple weeks earlier as a stray,
Not in Mississippi. Dr. Phil Bushby, one of and the staf now knew him well. “Elmer Fudge
the more prominent proponents of the national is ready to lick your face and smell your yard,”
spay/neuter eforts, teaches at Mississippi State. noted the last column of Cotton’s spreadsheet.
He thinks of this interplay between surgery and The mix is crucial, like a box of bonbons, “but
transport like a faucet looding a basement. sometimes it’s not that easy,” Cotton says. “Bless
84 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
their hearts they might all be black and brown.” their transport program, in Kentucky, Tennessee,
Joyce, a 3-year-old pit bull mix, is white, and Virginia, California, and Kansas—each serving
traveling with four of her 2-month-old pup- shelters within a 650-mile radius. “It’s a costly pro-
pies. “Joyce is a sweet soul,” notes the manifest. gram because we do it that way, but it’s a very safe
“She has been through so much.” Joyce and her program because we do it that way,” Walsh says.
pups were among 19 animals seized from a home They talk about someday putting themselves
where a murder took place. Cotton tries to stay out of business. The end point would be when a
dispassionate. “The ones at OCHS, we know each combination of transport and population con-
other,” she says, “but you can’t have favoritism trol balances supply and demand, and animals
on transport, because you can lose sight of what’s are no longer euthanized for space in America.
best for the dog, and what’s best for the source The adjacent risk, however, is a shortage of dogs
shelter, and what’s best all around.” that spurs unsafe puppy breeding. That prospect
The ASPCA precisely manages the movements has some discussing the possibility of shelters in
of its 18 vans, which run north full and south empty. high-demand areas starting their own breeding
It also sets strict requirements for how both source programs. For those who vividly recall the era of
and destination shelters participate in the reloca- high euthanasia rates—much less those who are
tion program. Everyone needs to follow the ASPCA’s still living it—it’s a shocking idea, like a cocktail
thick portfolio of “standard operating procedures,” hour at rehab. But, its proponents argue, encour-
covering everything from how the dogs are tagged aging more healthy “American mutts” could be an
before departure to keeping track of which destina- alternative to allowing commercial puppy breeders
tion states require which heartworm preventatives. ‘TRANSPORT IS to meet the public demand for animals.
As much as anything, the shared procedures help
build connections between the source and desti- BAILING WATER The nexT morning, a crescent moon hangs
nation communities. Rather than well-resourced over the Mississippi predawn. After a night at the
OUT OF YOUR
Northern shelter workers shaking their heads at Hampton Inn, the ASPCA’s drivers, Mel Rock and
the poor treatment of animals by their Southern BASEMENT. Jess Tippie, beep the van back up to the OCHS
colleagues, the program gives everyone a better door. The staf gathers around, and Tippie checks
understanding of their shared challenges. When SPAY/NEUTER the paperwork on an iPad and shules the printed
possible, they visit one another. “Have them walk rabies certiicates in plastic sheaths. “All the health
IS TURNING THE
a mile in their shoes, because there’s nothing like certs were good?” Rock asks.
that,” says Heather Cammisa, former president and FAUCET OFF. Then the dogs start coming. A 20-year-old vol-
CEO of St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center in New unteer cradles Button, a tiny dachshund she’s been
Jersey. “They’re already getting their teeth kicked YOU HAVE TO fostering at home for 10 days. Rock and Tippie had
in, just on what they have to deal with every day.” already labeled the crates strapped into the back of
DO BOTH.’
Over time, the shelters that needed the most the van, determining in advance where each ani-
help ind themselves in a position to help others. mal would go. Their moves are all choreographed
At the ASPCA, they call it “pushing the line”: when DR. PHIL and codiied by the ASPCA, from closing the van
BUSHBY
the problem of animal overpopulation is solved in door while each animal is loaded in, to changing
one place, it can be meaningfully addressed in the out their surgical gowns and gloves to prevent the
next. “What we’re starting to see is shelters that spread of any illness. Andrea Spain, a professor of
started as sources of dogs for us, become aggre- English at the university who runs her own small
gators of dogs for their own communities,” says rescue, brings over Michelle Obama, Mo for short, a
the ASPCA’s Bershadker. When OCHS brings in 9-month-old Rottweiler mix, who jumps in circles.
healthy animals from around the region, those res- Rock ills a red watering can with bottled water, then
cues can devote more energy to their struggling slips its thin spout through the mesh crate doors,
animals. “It’s deinitely a domino efect, where we illing each animal’s bowl for the all-day journey.
help them, they get help from their community, It’s 38 dogs in total, and also a webbing of ties
and it evolves,” says Anderson. between communities—in Starkville, in Missis-
Cotton’s group was headed from OCHS to Way- sippi as a whole, at the destination shelter in Kan-
side Waifs, a shelter in Kansas City, Mo., around sas City, and wherever the dogs end up. When the
600 miles away. Each month, Karen Walsh, the truck leaves, OCHS has space for 20 new animals.
ASPCA’s senior director of animal relocation, cre- Not for long. “No sooner than we get a couple of
ates a transport calendar with her team. They poll kennels open, here comes a newbie!” Cotton says.
the destination shelters on how much space they “There is a door they open somewhere and it’s just
have; conirm that the source shelters don’t have any like . .. Who let the dogs out?”
health issues, like a distemper outbreak; and plan
the routes. The ASPCA operates ive “Waystations,” Blum is the author of The Weather Machine and
overnight rest stops that serve as dog motels for Tubes
85
Time Off

WALKING
IN YE’S
SHADOW
BY ANDREW R. CHOW

Two ilmmakers are

releasing a Kanye
West docuseries on
Netlix—but it took
two decades for
them to get there

INSIDE

PAM & TOMMY FUMBLES ROM-COM ICON JENNIFER LOPEZ THE CAMPUS NOVEL GETS TWISTED—
AN ATTEMPT AT FEMINISM TAKES ANOTHER SHOT AT LOVE AND MORE REALISTIC IN THE PROCESS

PHOTOGR APH BY ANDRE D. WAGNER FOR TIME 87

TIME OFF OPENER

W
hen you look aT kanye WesT, WhaT
do you see? An egomaniac? A hip-hop
legend? A god? Is he “very cool,” to quote
Donald Trump, or “a jackass,” to quote
Barack Obama?
When Coodie Simmons looks at Kanye West, he sees a
brother. The ilmmaker, a fellow Chicagoan, met West—
who recently changed his legal name to Ye—at a South Side
barbershop in 1995. Intrigued by his combustible talent
and charisma, Simmons began ilming him for a documen-
tary he hoped to release once West won his irst Grammy.
Simmons racked up hundreds of hours of footage in which
West chased down industry executives, feuded with for-
mer collaborators, and winced through jaw surgery follow-
ing a life-changing car accident. But after West won mul-
tiple Grammys in 2005 and grew increasingly famous and
erratic, he and Simmons fell out, seemingly quashing any
hopes Simmons had of telling his story.
Until now. On Feb. 16, Simmons and his creative partner △
Kanye West with his mother Donda in 2005
Chike Ozah will release their three-part West documentary,
Jeen-Yuhs, on Netlix. (Jeen-Yuhs is produced by TIME
Studios, the ilm and television division of TIME.) Jeen-
Yuhs is far from a conventional biodoc: there are no talking ‘The old Over the next couple of years,
heads or dutiful timelines, and Simmons’ camerawork is Simmons stood side by side with West
often lo-i and shaky. Kanye is as the pugnacious rapper struggled
But the documentary’s lack of polish is purposeful, serv- just Kanye. in a hip-hop ecosystem dominated by
ing as a rare window into West’s psyche. Simmons put his gangster rap. Simmons captured West
own tumultuous relationship with West at the center of He still storming the oices of Roc-a-Fella
the story to disentangle the man, born Kanye Omari West, has that Records, blasting now classic records
from the sprawling mythos that currently engulfs him. In hunger.’ like “All Falls Down” as employees
doing so, he and Ozah build a riveting narrative about the there ignored him; waiting for Burger
COODIE SIMMONS
importance of faith, in several senses of the word. “This King dinners; getting roasted by other
isn’t the deinitive Kanye West documentary,” Ozah says. rappers for his saliva-soaked retainer.
“We wanted to use our footage as a tool, especially for other West’s momentum had slowed to an
Black people that come from the communities we come agonizing crawl.
from, to feel comfortable to have a higher belief in God; to One of the few people who believed
get past their fears and unlock their own genius.” wholeheartedly in West’s potential
in these early days was his mother
There was a Time when Simmons and West more or less Donda. She features prominently in
existed upon the same level of fame. In the late ’90s, Sim- Jeen-Yuhs, serving as a spark plug and
mons had made a name for himself hosting the Chicago guardian who ofers sage advice and
public-access TV show Channel Zero, which lovingly cap- endless encouragement. Even more so
tured hip-hop culture. In the same city, the teenage West than West’s latest album Donda, the
was producing and making music with local artists. “He documentary reveals the outsize im-
would come up to the barbershop and be playing his beats pact she had, and still has, on her son’s
for all of us,” Simmons recalls. “He always loved me putting creativity, ferocity, and hustler’s ap-
the camera on him; he was really in your face.” proach to the world. “You have to be
When West moved to Newark, N.J., in 2000 to be closer able to see yourself .. . to see it when
to hip-hop’s power center, Simmons began pursuing a doc- no one else can see it,” she wrote in
umentary about Michael Jordan’s rumored return to the her 2007 memoir, Raising Kanye. “You
NBA. But one day after returning from Miami—where he have to speak things into creation.”
ilmed Magic Johnson, Pufy, and Jennifer Lopez talking Simmons, too, played a key role
about their love for Jordan—Simmons was robbed at gun- in West’s career as the wheels started
point in Chicago, losing his car and footage. to turn. The ilmmaker used his con-
Stunned and unmoored, Simmons decided to use nections to help West clear classic
the insurance money to follow West to New York. “That R&B samples—a hallmark of the rap-
carjacking was an angel for me: taking that adversity and per’s early hits—and co-directed, with
making it work.” Ozah, his irst music video, “Through
88 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 △ △
West performing in New York City in 2003 Filmmakers Coodie Simmons, left, and Chike Ozah with West in 2004

the Wire.” Instead of recording, West and his support of Donald Trump, the But Simmons also understood how
would rap early ideas directly into pair reconnected, with West asking West’s most extreme displays of hot-
Simmons’ camera, using the raw foot- Simmons to accompany him on a trip headed aggression were extensions of
age to build songs . “I hated that,” Sim- to China. Simmons says he was less fo- the ethos that had fueled his earliest
mons recalls. “I used to think, ‘Jay-Z cused on getting the footage to inish successes. West’s entire modus ope-
and them are at the studio. Why are we his ilm than in supporting his friend. randi had been to smash barriers; his
sitting here and you rapping to me?’” “My camera was like a disguise, be- power arose precisely from the fact that
West’s persistence paid of, and he cause he knows me having a camera he did things people said he shouldn’t.
soon ascended to the top. But in doing all this time,” he says. “People would Two decades after their irst meet-
so, he abandoned his partnership with be like, ‘He just a cameraman.’ Mean- ing, Simmons inally persuaded West
Simmons in favor of more established while, me and Kanye were having real to let him and Ozah tell their story,
ilmmakers like Hype Williams. In an serious, deep conversations about which is now about friendship and the
agonizing sequence in the docuseries, meditation and Jesus.” turbulent forces of fame, grief, and
a drunken West mistakenly calls Sim- During this second period of ilm- God. “Our work is about impact: to
mons “Chike” at a Grammys after- ing, West’s mood swung unpredict- help people feel comfortable follow-
party. “There’s been times I never want ably, as he ranted about his hospital- ing their dreams and passions,” Ozah
to show that footage of him dissing ization (for what was described by says. “That may not have been the goal
me,” Simmons says. “It was sickening.” dispatchers as a “psychiatric emer- when Coodie started shooting it. But
Despite the distance, Donda West gency”) and his support for Tucker this ilm took on its own journey.”
took Simmons under her wing, giv- Carlson. Simmons was uncomfortable, West initially agreed to the vision.
ing him jobs and inviting him over for even shutting his camera of when he But true to form, he proved unpredict-
Christmas. But in 2007, she died from felt West was going of the rails. able, and in January demanded “inal
complications postsurgery, sending edit and approval” of the series in an
Kanye and Simmons into tailspins. Instagram post. Simmons and Ozah
Simmons edited an in-memoriam were disappointed, and declined to
video for her funeral through tears. give him that authority. They didn’t
G E T T Y I M A G E S (3); S I M M O N S A N D W E S T: N E T F L I X

make this ilm for West, after all. “I’m

After DonDA’s DeAth, Simmons not a videographer and I never was:
lost touch with West for six years. He I was always directing a documen-
was stuck: he had hours of incred- tary,” Simmons says. But he knows,
ible footage but no leverage to do any- better than almost anyone, that the
thing with it. “Why ight a no-win contradictions that can make West
ight knowing I’m not in the mix of Ye frustrating are also the ones that can
and his team?” he says. But in 2016, △ make him singularly great. “The old
when West was making headlines for Simmons, left, with West at a Kanye is just Kanye,” Simmons says.
increasingly incoherent monologues 2006 Grammys afterparty “He still has that hunger.” □
89
TIME OFF TELEVISION

◁ Stan and
James’ physical
transformations are
the show’s highlight

Based on a 2014 Rolling Stone fea-

ture, Pam & Tommy stretches a short
movie’s worth of material to eight
episodes of up to an hour apiece. One
episode opens with a seemingly inter-
minable sequence in which Rand and
adult-entertainment icon Uncle Miltie
(Oferman) pitch the tape to studio
after litigation-averse studio. I guess
it’s apt that the show its Umberto
Eco’s famous deinition of porn: “If,
to go from A to B, the characters take
longer than you would like, then the
ilm you are seeing is pornographic.”

WHAT PUSHES Pam & Tommy from

inane to cynical is, ironically, its in-
termittent attempts to view the saga
REVIEW
through a feminist lens. Midway
through the series, the mostly male
In Pam & Tommy, a sex-tape saga producers bring in a few female story-
tellers, including writer Sarah Gub-
that fails to kick-start the heart bins (Better Things) and director Lake
BY JUDY BERMAN Bell, to weigh the scandal’s dispro-
portionate impact on Pam. Suddenly,
WHEN THE NEWS BROKE, IN 2020, transformation into the Baywatch star. a character heretofore depicted as a
that Disney-owned Hulu was mak- (The show’s hair and makeup deserve simpering bimbo is landing critiques
ing a miniseries about Pamela Ander- all the awards.) Seth Rogen, who devel- like “Sluts don’t get to decide what
son, Tommy Lee, and the purloined oped the project with producing part- happens to pictures of their bodies.”
sex tape that shook the world, it came ner Evan Goldberg and writer Robert The show’s creators may have been
as a surprise. The platform had al- Siegel, dons a mullet as Rand Gauthier, genuinely moved to give Anderson her
ways been the streaming home for the the beleaguered carpenter who steals due. But even if that’s the case, their
company’s R-rated fare, but it seemed the couple’s honeymoon video after slapdash assemblage of characteriza-
doubtful that Disney would be bold Tommy pushes him too far. Nick Ofer- tions and tones does her a disservice.
enough to do justice to a triple-X man, Taylor Schilling, and The White The same goes for their choice to paint
premise. Well, as all the prerelease Lotus breakout Fred Hechinger round her marriage as a whirlwind romance
headlines trumpeting the ictionalized out Rand’s sleazy L.A. milieu. and relegate the six months Lee spent
Lee’s animatronic talking penis con- There’s more to this story, which in prison on felony spousal-battery
irmed, that particular worry was mis- ushered in the age of internet pornog- charges to onscreen text.
placed. It turns out that the problems raphy and presaged legal battles over Pam & Tommy is the kind of story
with Pam & Tommy go far beyond a revenge porn, than most people know. it’s almost impossible to tell in the
shortage (or surplus) of raunch. Some of it is even worth telling. But post-#MeToo era—one that combines
The best thing this frustrating the show is wildly inconsistent, swing- trashy pleasures with an accounting of
’90s-set crime caper has going for it ing from fratty exploitation romp to systemic misogyny. Its creators would
is its cast. Sebastian “Winter Soldier” revisionist buzzkill to dramatized not have been wrong to fear a back-
Stan captures the manic machismo Wikipedia entry without bothering to lash to a more glib depiction of Ander-
of Mötley Crüe drummer Lee in full, smooth out the transitions. The cen- son’s ordeal. But what they’ve made
chaotic lower. If Lily James, the Brit- tral couple can come of as reasonably instead is a cowardly compromise
ish period-drama stalwart, leans in to intelligent and relective or deeply that, talking phallus and all, seems
Anderson’s breathy ditziness to an ex- stupid and shallow. In some scenes bound to satisfy no one.
tent that feels slightly mean, at least Tommy is a tender, overgrown boy; in
HULU

she makes an astonishing physical others he’s a raging psychopath. PAM & TOMMY debuts Feb. 2 on Hulu
90 TIME February 14/February 21, 2022
 REVIEW

Another fresh prince of a town called Bel-Air

HANDSOME, FUNNY, AND OOZING disappear and keep him safe in one of
charisma, Will Smith would have ex- L.A.’s most luxurious ZIP codes.
celled at anything he attempted as a In this telling, Uncle Phil (Adrian
21-year-old rapper. Luckily for kids Holmes) is running for DA on a plat-
growing up in the ’90s, he turned to form of ending the school-to-prison
△ the small screen in the classic NBC pipeline, and Will fears he’s a cam-
sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. paign prop. Tensions lare between
Viewers drawn in by Smith’s ener- Aunt Viv (Cassandra Freeman), who
REVIEW getic presence found more to love has abandoned her art career to be
than one famous face. Each member a mom, and eldest daughter Hillary
of the stufy yet loving Banks clan be- (Coco Jones), an inluencer trying to
came a foil for Will’s street-smart ex- break into the food industry. Hardly
troversion, and every actor in the en- a nerd, Will’s cousin and rival Carlton
semble shined. As Tatyana Ali, who (Olly Sholotan) is now a preppy Xanax-
played Will’s cousin Ashley, observed snorting lacrosse player who rules
in a 2020 reunion special, “Our show Bel-Air Academy with a haughty glare.
meant Black excellence to people.” Yes, Bel-Air is another rich-people
To its credit, Peacock’s passable re- soap. The dialogue can be stif, and
boot doesn’t try to re-create that co- ’90s-kid references get old. Yet it does
medic chemistry. Inspired by a viral have the makings of a solid drama.
spoof trailer for a dark Fresh Prince ad- There’s only one Will Smith, but Jabari
aptation, Bel-Air (which includes the Banks makes a magnetic lead in his
video’s mastermind, Morgan Cooper, own right. And as the season pro-
among its executive producers) re- gresses, story lines that interrogate
imagines the sitcom as a soap. New- how wealthy Black families interact
comer Jabari Banks’ Will is a West with their own community and the
Philly basketball phenom who sees his white world raise a great question:
future thrown into uncertainty when What does Black excellence mean three
he’s arrested with a gun after a run-in decades after The Fresh Prince? —J.B.
with a gangster. Enter Will’s power-
ful lawyer uncle, to make the charges BEL-AIR arrives on Peacock on Feb. 13
T H E G I R L B E F O R E : H B O ; B E L- A I R : P E A C O C K

△
Banks gives Smith’s breakout character a soapy twist
91
TIME OFF MOVIES

REVIEW

Why Jennifer Lopez

remains the patron saint
of romantic comedies
BY STEPHANIE ZACHAREK

in a world sTarved for glamour, Thank goodness

for Jennifer Lopez. There’s a moment in her new roman-
tic comedy, Marry Me, where, as a worldwide pop star who
impetuously marries a regular-guy math teacher (Owen
Wilson), she makes a showbiz entrance almost too outsize
for even the big screen. Rising from the depths of an arena
stage in a cloud of sea-foam white smoke, her pulled-back
hair capped with a spiny jeweled crown, she’s the spirit of
midcentury movie and swimming star Esther Williams in-
carnate. Her skin is luminescent, like the inside of a shell.
Her bearing is both regal and athletic, a reminder that she’s
not really a deity, but a middle-aged woman who works hard
to keep every muscle sculpted. Real yet unreal, she’s the
kind of extravagant vision that the movies, so obsessed with
green-screen special efects, barely have room for anymore.
Lopez, one of the most gifted and appealing performers
of the past two decades, is a huge star—and yet the mov-
ies have rarely known what to do with her and her signii- △
cant gifts as an actor. Her breakthrough performance in Big dress, windbreaker,” as one incredulous by-
Steven Soderbergh’s 1998 Out of Sight was a knockout. Yet big dreams stander describes him. Windbreaker
somehow Lopez became the kind of actor that the movie- guy is Wilson’s Charlie, and though the
going public seemed to write of as being “good enough” marriage begins as a stunt, these two
for romantic comedies but not much else—as if, somehow, creatures from diferent worlds start to
romantic comedies required lesser gifts, when in truth genuinely fall for each other.
the bar is quite high. Lopez has been the best thing about
otherwise lawed comedies, like Maid in Manhattan (2002) If that premIse sounds roll-your-
or Monster-in-Law (2005). At the same time, alleged fail- eyes crazy, it’s only by modern stan-
ures like the not-really-that-bad Gigli (2003) have been dards: audiences of the 1930s and
held against her. In 2019, at least, she got some vindication. ’40s were completely comfortable
Her dazzling turn in Hustlers—as the Lucite-cool veteran with screwball marital comedies—
stripper queen Ramona—once again reminded moviegoers The Moon’s Our Home, The Miracle
how much Lopez has to ofer as a dramatic actor, even if the of Morgan’s Creek—in which people
Academy didn’t deign to notice. make nutso seat-of-the-pants deci-
No one needs to feel sorry for Lopez, a star with a loyal sions when choosing life partners.
fan base who has made piles of dough both as an actor and And Wilson and Lopez are charm-
as a musical performer. But it’s still possible for a celebrity ing together, not only because they’re
to be both hugely successful and underappreciated, and both charismatic, likable actors, but
Lopez falls into that category. Marry Me is a lively, casual de-
Even if also because the two of them, both
light, its premise delectably preposterous: Lopez plays Kat Lopez is a in their early 50s, come of as people
Valdez, a superstar who’s completely comfortable living her survivor who’ve done some living. It’s easy to
life in the public eye and thus has no qualms about marrying buy Wilson, with his boxer’s nose and
her fellow-superstar iancé Bastian (played by Colombian in a tough almost visibly bruised heart, as a di-
pop star Maluma), in a global broadcast. Just as she’s about business, vorced, single-dad math whiz who’s
to step out for her big “I do”—in a massive jeweled dress her features too distracted to consider he might
that billows around her with reckless disregard for the laws have a second chance at love. And
of space, time, or physics—she’s heartbroken to learn, via haven’t while Lopez may look ageless, Kat’s
social media, that Bastian has cheated on her. But she’s got become been around—she trails a list of ex-
the dress, the venue, the guests—why not just go through husbands even longer than the train
with it, whatever it may be? And so, as her lawful wedded calciied by on that wedding dress. Yet she still be-
husband, she chooses from the audience a random “guy in a cynicism lieves her guy is out there, and Lopez,
92 Time February 14/February 21, 2022
 TIMELINE

with her joyous, tremulous optimism,

makes you believe it too.
Because Lopez is always believable.
Even if, in real life, she’s a survivor in
a tough business, her features haven’t
become calciied by cynicism. Her
Bronx backstory is part of her muscle
M A R R Y M E : U N I V E R S A L P I C T U R E S ; I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y N E I L J A M I E S O N F O R T I M E ; S O U R C E P H O T O S : E V E R E T T C O L L E C T I O N (6)

memory; she’s rags and riches in one

person. There’s softness in her gaze, a
kind of dreaminess that speaks of, and
to, human vulnerability.
Yet she’s also commanding enough
to hold a screen of any size, and cer-
tainly the big one. Romantic comedy
as a genre is in a rut. It’s easy to spend
an evening slumped in front of enter-
taining yet not wholly satisfying epi-
sodes of And Just Like That . .. or Emily
in Paris. We may not think of these
series as “good” television, and really,
we may just want to turn our brains
of for an hour or two. But when did
everything, including our expecta-
tions, get shrunk so small? We can
ask more of romantic comedies, and
there’s no shame in yearning for spec-
tacle and glamour, too: J. Lo rising
from a foamy faux ocean like a show-
biz deep-sea goddess, anyone? Never
mind the train of a fairy-tale dress;
sometimes not even the big screen is
large enough for our dreams. 
93
TIME OFF

BOOKS ◁ Two of this season’s

Updating the buzziest novels take
on a sinister side of
campus scandal higher education
BY ANNABEL GUTTERMAN

IF YOU’VE BEEN ON TIKTOK OVER

the past two years, you already know:
the kids are into “dark academia.” In
social media terms, it’s an aesthetic—
think images of Gothic architecture,
dusty libraries, and vintage plaid, all
tinged with a sense of wickedness. The
hashtag has more than 1.7 billion views.
Real-life academia is plenty dark
itself. Over the past few years, a series
of scandals has rattled colleges across
the U.S.: the Varsity Blues admissions
scheme made sensational headlines, a
white professor at George Washington
University lied about being Black, and
countless male educators have been
outed as sexual predators.
It comes as no surprise, then, that
two of this season’s thorniest novels
take place on the fertile ground that is
the college campus. The campus novel
has long been a reader-favorite sub-
genre, one that captures the drama of
self-contained, pressurized worlds. woman who sees herself as a vic-
There was the murder of a student tim, nor one about a woman trying
in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, to clear her husband’s name. Instead
published in 1992, and a freshman’s Jonas dissects her narrator’s shift-
coming-of-age in Elif Batuman’s ing perspectives on power and desire,
The Idiot, from 2017. But the disturb- which are complicated by the arrival pushed her into it because of her
ing goings-on at real elite institutions of a young colleague. The protago- Taiwanese American background.
lend new poignance to stories set on nist becomes obsessed by her hot new When Ingrid makes a stunning dis-
campus. Julia May Jonas’ Vladimir and co-worker—and her behavior enters covery about Chou’s identity, she is
Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Disorientation increasingly questionable territory. forced to consider how she got to this
explore in blistering detail the power In darkly funny terms, Jonas creates place, and how much she’s allowed
imbalances that inevitably exist in a portrait of a narcissistic reckoning white men, like her professor and her
academia. with her age and vanity, but also the iancé, to set her path. Chou details
In Vladimir, out Feb. 1, an un- limits of her power. She’s certainly not her protagonist’s struggles with dry
named 58-year-old English profes- one to root for, but that doesn’t make humor and wit, underlining every-
sor grapples with the diiculties of her observations on the impact of her thing about her life that is absurd, just
teaching at her university after her husband’s actions any less astute. as Ingrid herself is beginning to see it.
husband, the department chair, is Both characters chafe against
brought under investigation for inap- LIKE THE NARRATOR of Vladimir, structural inequities on campuses
propriate relationships with students. the protagonist of Chou’s searing sat- built and run by a class of entitled men.
The allegations are not surprising to ire Disorientation, coming March 22, But there’s something more basic at
the protagonist—they had an open is also dealing with the ramiications work here too, something that these
marriage—but she never expected to of a college scandal. Ingrid Yang is women—and the internet—understand
be dragged into his mess. The depart- a 29-year-old Ph.D. student inish- at their core: the combination of knowl-
ment suggests she take a break from ing up her dissertation on Chinese edge, power, and misbehavior makes
teaching, and her students brazenly American poet Xiao-Wen Chou. She for a titillating story. As Ingrid notes,
advise her to get a divorce. was never actually interested in East “Academics universally adored one
Vladimir is not a novel about a Asian studies, but a white professor thing: academic scandals.” 
94 TIME February 14/February 21, 2022
 ◁ Kathy Johnston, Mirzam’s chief
chocolate officer, on Jan. 24

a more promising market than the team had irst

thought. “We didn’t anticipate such a strong re-
sponse locally,” Johnston says. “We had no time
to think about export.”
Born in New Zealand, Johnston moved to
Dubai when she was 3 years old. Her love of
all things chocolate goes all the way back to
her childhood, when she’d build ladders out
of kitchen chairs to get at her mother’s hidden
chocolate stash and spend her pocket money on
imported praline eggs and salted caramel bars.
She recalls telling her grandfather, who was the
lead mechanic on Sir Edmund Hillary’s 1958
South Pole expedition, that her dream was to
have her own chocolate factory.
That dream has come true at Mirzam, where
Johnston oversees everything from sourcing
FOOD (she works with small producers around the
world) to production, packaging, and sales. But
The chocolatier who took her true passion is coming up with innovative
her passion to the desert new sweets, with a focus on incorporating tradi-
BY NICOLA CHILTON tional Emirati recipes into the company’s ofer-
ings, including its popular crepelike rigag bread;
safron- and rose-infused halvah (a dense con-
KATHY JOHNSTON IS SO IN LOVE WITH CHOCO- ‘I’m never fectionary sweetened with honey); and aseeda
late, she lies awake at night thinking about it. (a cardamom-scented dessert that Johnston
“For as long as I can remember, I have been ob- going thinks should be the next pumpkin spice).
sessed,” she says. But as chief chocolate oicer of to do
Dubai-based chocolatier Mirzam, that’s a healthy RECIPES LIKE THOSE have helped Mirzam
ixation to have. anything grow at a breakneck pace—it has doubled its
Like many other goods on Dubai’s store else except production capacity every year since opening
shelves, most of the city’s chocolate has tradi- make amid ever growing demand and increased its
tionally been imported. But Mirzam is one of staf from one to 75 in ive years. A bit of scrap-
several ambitious startups developing home- chocolate.’ piness doesn’t hurt either. The company moved
grown alternatives—in its case, it’s making high- KATHY JOHNSTON, into a larger space and bought new heavy
quality, bean-to-bar chocolate featuring ingre- MIRZAM’S CHIEF equipment in 2020, but because of pandemic-
dients sourced from along a historic spice route CHOCOLATE OFFICER related travel restrictions, technicians were
that ran from the west coast of Japan across the unable to travel to set up the gear, so Johnston
Middle East to Europe. Johnston joined Mirzam and her team had to igure out how to do so on
in early 2016 after meeting the company’s found- their own.
ers, who persuaded her to work for them, rather Now, about ive years after selling its irst
than chasing her original dream of moving to bars, Mirzam is still working on “producing
Switzerland, chocolate capital of the world. amazing-quality chocolate,” Johnston says, a pro-
At irst, the company’s plan was to primar- cess she calls an “ongoing work.” The company’s
ily export its oferings to the U.S. while slowly goal for the next ive years is to maintain quality
building a market in the United Arab Emirates. at greater volume and to open another shop.
But locals quickly embraced the company’s But its ambitions have also grown to include
unique chocolates, which are known for their a certain civic pride, if not outright boosterism.
Emirati lavors and spices such as cardamon, “It’s about working with Emirati recipes and
N ATA L I E N A C C A C H E F O R T I M E

almonds, and pistachios. (That Mirzam col- artists, and highlighting the amazing things that
laborates with local artists for its branding and are happening here in Dubai,” Johnston says.
packaging further bolsters its hometown cred.)
Nearly as soon as Mirzam’s team opened their
doors for tastings, the company sold out of all of
its stock—a sign as strong as any that Dubai was
95
 8 QUESTIONS

Quinta Brunson The comedian on her new sitcom,

Abbott Elementary, and drawing inspiration
from the teachers in her life

Why did you want to set this schools, high teacher turnover.
workplace sitcom in a school How did you find a balance be-
environment? I’m a big fan of work- What have you tween addressing tough issues, but
place sitcoms, and I got inspired from keeping the show funny? We didn’t
spending some time with my mom heard from real try to make anything funny that
before she retired. For about 40 years,
she had taught and I’d been with her
public school couldn’t be made funny. There are
some things that can be background
so much. I was in her kindergarten teachers in jokes. In an episode about new tech-
class when I was little. I went to the
school she taught at. I rode to school
response to nology, we very quickly talked about
the school-to-prison pipeline. It’s a
with her; I rode home with her. That the show? huge issue, but that probably can’t
environment felt very natural to me, be a full-episode concept because
and I felt that I could tell some really that would change the nature of our
strong stories there. show. We want to make sure it stays
a comedy. There are always ways to
How did your mom shape your insert these larger issues into the pic-
understanding of what it’s like ture to get people thinking and talk-
to be a teacher today? The hours ing about what’s going on in schools.
my mom put in were crazy, and the
impact she had on children’s lives Your character, Janine, has a great
alone meant it was a huge job. And dynamic with Sheryl Lee Ralph’s
they do it for not only one student, character, Barbara, a veteran
but 20 to 30 students at a time. teacher who is kind of a mentor. Is
People don’t get how diicult that is. there someone in your career who
has been that person for you? I feel
What has your mom thought of like Larry Wilmore is my unoicial
the show? She loves it. She called mentor. I worked on a show with
me about this past episode. There’s him, and the dynamic was very like
a scene where the teacher Barbara Janine and Barbara: “Quinta, do the
Howard, who’s kind of inspired by job. Do the writing. Write the good
my mom, has no idea who a student work.” Very honest with me and very
is who is praising her. He’s a grown stern. I don’t know if Larry thinks
man because she’s been teaching for I’m his mentee, but he is my mentor.
years. That was ripped right from
my mother’s life. She was like, “I’m What has it been like expanding
gonna start needing a royalty check.” into network comedy after your
work on BuzzFeed and A Black
Your middle-school teacher Ms. Lady Sketch Show? BuzzFeed is a
Abbott inspired the name of the platform about reaching everyone,
show. Have you spoken with her and I enjoyed that. It’s part of why I
since it premiered? I ended up call- joined network TV, because you can
ing her. She was overjoyed, just so reach everyone with it. When I was a
E R I K C A R T E R — T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S/ R E D U X

happy to hear from me. I’m like, “You kid, network television was the way
know, you inspired the name?” She everyone in my house got to watch
burst out in tears. It turns out she’s together. I loved being able to watch
retiring this year, after so many years TV with my family, so I wanted to
of phenomenal teaching, so she said do that for people. I wanted to cre-
this was a wonderful retirement gift. ate a sitcom that had a strong point
of view, from the millennial me, but
The show touches on big problems could also span generations.
in education—underfunded public —KATIE REILLY
96 TIME February 14/February 21, 2022
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