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      Green Savior or Deadly Menace? Paris Votes on E-Scooter Ban

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      For five years, the French capital has permitted the renting of electric scooters, which have proven both popular and perilous. On Sunday, voters will decide whether to end the experiment.PARIS — Manil Hadjoudj was handing out fliers at the entrance to Sorbonne University, tirelessly repeating, “Do you care about electric scooters?” to passing students, most of whom seemed indifferent to his plea.“I care about our pension system right now,” one of them said without stopping.Mr. Hadjoudj, 18, had been hired by the three electric scooter rental companies in Paris to try to persuade young riders to help save their businesses in a vote this Sunday, when the French capital is holding a referendum on whether to ban renting the scooters within city limits.Five years after the motorized version of the two-wheeled scooters flooded the streets and sidewalks of Paris, this transportation option — whose human-powered version has long been popular with children — has become a topic of adult fury, delight and tension.City Hall calls them a threat to public safety and environmentally questionable, and wants them gone. The rental companies counter that their scooters are eco-friendly, ease getting around the city and create jobs. They see Paris as a model for good scooter practices around the world.And Parisians? They have mixed emotions.“They come in handy at night when you get out of a party and miss the last metro to get home,” said Axel Ottow, 20, stepping out of a subway station. But while he said he used them on rare occasions when no better option was available, he pointed out a commonly citied drawback: He found them “dangerous to ride.”When the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, opened the rental scooter market to 16 operators in 2019, the city seemed to have all the characteristics of a gold mine for the companies.Its small geographic size compared to Los Angeles, Berlin or London was ideal for short-distance trips. Many bike lanes had already been installed, offering paths away from cars. And tourists, who turned out to be major clients, could get in some additional sightseeing as they zipped from the Louvre en route to L’Arc de Triomphe.In 2022, Paris recorded about 20 million trips on 15,000 rental scooters, making it one of the largest markets in the world.But at least initially, the machines created chaos, with many riders zooming wherever and however they wanted — on sidewalks, down one-way streets, weaving between cars.“It was an urban jungle,” said David Belliard, the deputy mayor in charge of transportation.Scooters from Lime, a San Francisco-based company, at a warehouse in Lisbon in February.Patricia De Melo Moreira/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe electric scooters could race up to 19 miles an hour and were parked anywhere and everywhere — sprawled across roads, sidewalks and even chucked into the Seine.In 2019, a rider was hit by a van and killed, becoming the first but far from the last rental scooter fatality in the city.Alarmed, the city drafted rules. Scooters were deemed motorized vehicles and forbidden to travel on sidewalks. Their maximum speed was reduced to about 12 miles an hour and even lower near schools, and specific parking spaces were created. The city introduced a fine of 135 euros, or $147, for riding on sidewalks or carrying a cuddling passenger on the vehicles meant for one, which had become a romantic Parisian cliché.In 2020, the city narrowed the number of operators to three: the San Francisco-based company Lime, the Dutch start-up Dott and Tier, a German start-up.“Since that initial period of chaos, we have seen an incredible amount of improvement in our service,” said Erwann Le Page, a spokesman for Tier, who said the company provided scooters in towns and cities across France, including other cities like Lyon and Bordeaux. Operators say that they made the vehicles heavier to increase stability and that 96 percent of the machines are now parked where they should be.But even with all the rule changes, the number of fatal accidents has increased along with scooters’ popularity.In 2021, 24 people were killed in France while riding a personal or rental scooter or other motorized devices like hoverboards and gyropods, and 413 were seriously injured, according to figures provided by the State Road Safety Department. Last year, 34 people died and 570 were seriously injured in the country. Accidents on scooters have become “a major health problem,” the French National Academy of Medicine said.“Scooters have an image of lightness and carelessness, but they also cause drama and death,” said Arnaud Kielbasa, who set up an association in 2019 for scooter victims after someone riding one knocked down his wife, who had been carrying their 7-week-old baby girl, who was hospitalized with a concussion.With 20 million trips taken last year, however, it’s obvious that a huge number of riders accept the danger. For scooter riders, helmets are recommended but not required by law, and the National Academy of Medicine has said that nationally, “in serious crashes, helmets were not worn nine out of 10 times.”For the employees of the scooter companies, their livelihood is also on the line in Sunday’s vote.“I don’t know what I’ll do next if the company has no choice but to fire me,” said Salifou Kaba, 26, a Tier employee whose job is to ride around Paris on an electric cargo bike to change the scooters’ batteries. The job has brought him a better place to live, bank loan approvals and stability, he said. “That’s why I’m afraid of Sunday’s results,” Mr. Kaba said.An official from the Paris mayor’s office moving electric scooters away from car parking spaces along a Paris street in 2019.Olivier Morin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe companies insist that their scooters, which run on electrically charged batteries, offer a low-carbon alternative to cars, which should, they say, make them attractive to Paris and its mayor, who has championed green initiatives.The vehicles “helped reduce pollution in about 600 cities in the world, including 100 in France,” said Mr. Le Page, pointing to a city-sponsored study that showed that 19 percent of scooter trips would have otherwise been made by car.That same study, however, found that more than three-quarters of the users would have otherwise walked, taken public transportation or biked if scooters were not an option.“Sure, scooters don’t emit any pollution like a car,” countered Mr. Belliard, a member of France’s Green party. “But a big majority would have used modes of transportation that are already decarbonized.”Nationwide, more than 750,000 electric scooters were sold in 2022, after a record 900,000 in 2021, according to the Federation of Micro-Mobility Professionals, which includes scooter distributors and retailers. And the mayor of Lyon, France’s third largest city, has just agreed to a four-year extension of its contract with Tier and Dott.But Paris’s City Hall, once excited to bring the new transportation choice to the French capital, is now keen to see it gone. Instead of banning the scooters outright, Ms. Hidalgo and her deputies decided to let the public vote in the referendum. A recent poll showed that 70 percent would vote against keeping them.If Tier, Lime and Dott lose Sunday’s vote, their contracts with the city will not be renewed, and the scooters’ zigzagging presence in Paris will be gone by the end of August.The operators have mounted a campaign in favor of keeping the scooters. They have criticized the fact that online voting — rare in France — was not allowed, arguing that its absence deters younger voters from participating. They have also complained that the geographic boundaries of who can vote were too restrictive, excluding people in the suburbs.In the week before the vote, the social network TikTok was buzzing with messages using the hashtag “sauvetatrott” (“save your scooter”), and Parisian social influencers have expounded on the importance of saving the “most romantic thing to do in Paris” or the only transportation service that’s “not affected by national strikes.”But many Parisians would find their ban a relief.“I don’t call them scooters, I call them garbage,” said Olivier Guntzberger, 45, an electronics salesman. Outside his storefront on a narrow street near the Champs-Élysées, 20 scooters were piled in a parking space. “I’m not going to cry over them,” he said.Catherine Porter More

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      It Would Be Foolish to Ignore What Just Happened in Chicago

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      Bret Stephens: Gail, the biggest political news from last week was the resounding defeat of the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, in the primary. Your thoughts on her political downfall?Gail Collins: Well, running Chicago is a very tough job in the best of times, and Mayor Lightfoot was stuck doing it in the pandemic era.Bret: Hmmm …Gail: OK, that was my best shot at defending her. She was a huge disappointment — in a place like Chicago, you expect the mayor to get into a lot of fights, but she seemed to pick a new one every hour.If you’ve got a city beset by crime and economic problems, any incumbent mayor would need a great plan and a whole lot of emotional connection to the average voter to deserve another term. None of that there.What’s your opinion?Bret: Every thriving city needs to get two basic things right: It has to be safe for people and safe for commerce. Under Lightfoot, homicides, carjackings and shoplifting skyrocketed, and businesses fled the city. Nearly a third of Michigan Avenue’s retail space is vacant. Boeing decided to move its headquarters out of the city. When the McDonald’s C.E.O. complained about crime, Lightfoot scolded him. So I’m glad Chicago voters had the good sense to give her the boot. I just hope they also have the good sense to go with the centrist Paul Vallas in the runoff election instead of his opponent, Brandon Johnson, who may be even further to the left than Lightweight — er, Lightfoot.Gail: We’re gonna have more to discuss on that point.Bret: The election will also have national implications, Gail. Notice that President Biden has said he won’t veto a bill in Congress that would reverse a District of Columbia law that lightened sentences for various felonies. Higher crime rates are going to dog Democratic candidates everywhere until they start to get as tough on the issue as they were when Biden was in the Senate, promoting the federal crime bill.Gail: Doubt there’s a Democrat in America who isn’t sensitive to the crime issue now. But as we follow this story, just want to leave you now with one thought: Getting tough on lawbreakers is not enough to make a great chief executive. Nearly. Remember Rudy Giuliani.Bret: A highly successful mayor who brought down crime, made the city livable again and was endorsed in 1997 for a second term by the editorial board of … The New York Times. Granted, it’s a shame about the rest of his career.Gail: Now Bret, here’s a change of subject for you. Masks! Been so eager to converse about your anti-mask column the other day. Eager in part because people keep stopping me on the street and yelping: “Bret! Masks!”Bret: Oh, yeah. I’m aware.Just to be clear, Gail, my column was not against masks per se. It was anti-mask mandates as an effective means of curbing communitywide spread. Masks can obviously work in tightly controlled settings, like operating rooms. People who correctly wore high-quality masks probably protected themselves and others, at least if they never removed them in public.Gail: Go on …Bret: But the mandates didn’t work, and it’s not just on account of the recent Cochrane analysis that I cited in my column. Our Times colleague David Leonhardt came to basically the same conclusion last year based on U.S. data. What can work at the individual level can, and often does, totally fail at the collective level.It’s also common sense. If you’re required to wear a mask on an airplane but allowed to take it off to eat or drink, the requirement becomes useless. If you’re supposed to wear a mask while walking to a table at a restaurant but not when sitting down, it’s useless. If you’re supposed to wear a mask but nobody is very concerned about whether it’s an N95 or a cloth mask, it’s useless.Gail: “Less useful” yeah. But my understanding has always been that the masks aren’t as important for protecting the healthy as they are critical for keeping people who are already infected from spreading germs to others.Those folks are going to go out sometimes whether we like it or not, and if they’re the only ones who have to wear masks, it’s like a walking declaration of disease — ringing a bell to warn that the leper is coming.Make sense? Why do I suspect I haven’t persuaded you?Bret: Human nature. People who are infected but don’t know it will be no better about wearing masks properly than anyone else. People who are infected, know it and irresponsibly walk around with the disease are probably not going to be responsible mask-wearers, either.There’s also the fact that, in a culture like America’s, there was never a chance we’d get the kind of compliance we need to make a real difference. Maybe in China, which could be draconian in its enforcement, but I don’t think any of us would have wanted that here.Bottom line, the government would have been wiser telling people: If you are immunocompromised or you have a potential comorbidity like obesity or diabetes, please wear N95 masks at all times in public. If you aren’t, please be respectful of those who do wear them.Gail: Not necessarily. One of the things that struck me when mask wearing began was how it kinda defined community. Folks declaring solidarity with their fellow citizens in joining together to fight a common battle.Bret: To me, the lesson was the opposite. Many of the people who were most emphatic in their belief in mask wearing — particularly those with media bullhorns — worked the sorts of jobs that didn’t require them to wear masks all their working hours. Not like waiters or store clerks or Uber drivers who had to wear them 8, 10, 12 hours a day, and sometimes wound up with sores in their mouths. The mandates didn’t just polarize us politically, they also exacerbated class divides.Gail: I got into the habit of telling Uber drivers to feel free to take off the mask. Most of them didn’t, which made me presume they were voluntarily protecting themselves against the passengers.Bret: Gail, you scofflaw!Gail: But on to another topic entirely — the Murdaugh murder trial! I have to say when you spend most of your life listening to reports about political drama, a major murder trial reminds you how nondramatic that stuff can be.Did you follow the case? I did and figured he’d be convicted. But I was shocked by how fast the jury came to a decision.Bret: You and our colleague Farhad Manjoo, who looked at the case through a technological lens and offered a terrific, contrarian take on the trial. That said, from what I watched of the trial, Alex Murdaugh struck me as evil incarnate. My wife will probably kill me for saying this — er, so to speak — but while I can at least grasp how someone can murder a spouse, I simply can’t comprehend how anyone could murder his own child.Gail: Yeah, but about the jury: I remember years and years ago, being a juror on a trial where the defendant had punched an old lady on a bus. In front of a lot of other people. Tons of testimony and the defendant himself — if I recall this correctly — took the stand to offer the excuse that he found the old lady really irritating.Still, we deliberated for hours! Not because there was any doubt about what we were going to do. It just seemed to show respect for the process. And, maybe, to qualify for another excellent free courthouse lunch.Bret: Spoken like a true journalist: Anything for a free lunch.Gail, before we go, I hope all of our readers spend some time with Hannah Dreier’s moving and brilliantly rendered report on the thousands of migrant children, sometimes as young as 12, who came to this country alone and are now working grueling hours in factories, kitchens, construction sites, garment makers, slaughterhouses and sawmills trying to survive and sending what little extra money they have to help their families back home. It’s a powerful reminder that the migration crisis isn’t just happening at the southern border. In many ways, it’s just beginning there.Gail: Bret, I love the way you point to the great work our colleagues are doing. Hannah’s reporting on the migrant children was heartbreaking. Politically, both sides agree there’s a terrible problem here in regulating both migration itself and what happens to people who arrive in hopes of creating better lives.But do you see any hope — any at all — of their getting together on a solution? Even a partial one?Bret: The problem shouldn’t be difficult to solve through compromise. Discipline and order at the border combined with compassion and aid toward those who are vulnerable and suffering. America has shown in the past that we can meet that challenge. We just need to muster the will to meet it again.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      The Spectacular Fall of Lori Lightfoot

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      It was a stunning rebuke. On Tuesday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago, the first Black woman and first openly L.G.B.T.Q. person to lead the city, failed to advance to a runoff, earning just 17 percent of the vote and becoming the first incumbent mayor in 40 years to lose a re-election bid.Four days before the election, I interviewed Lightfoot in her Chicago office. The space, with its soaring ceiling, was a clash of aesthetics, like many government buildings, displaying a kind of prudent grandeur, evoking the gravitas of the office without signaling excess, much like Lightfoot herself, who settled her small frame, dressed in a smart gray suit, into a large chair.During our nearly hourlong interview, she choked up and fought back tears when discussing the sacrifices her parents had made for her and her siblings. A smile lit her face when she talked about all the memes that had made her a folk hero in the early days of her term, and she puffed up with pride when discussing her proudest moments as mayor, including how she and her team had dealt with the Covid-19 crisis.But those weren’t the reasons I’d trekked to the frigid city on the lake. I’d come because Lightfoot belongs to a group of recently elected Black mayors of major American cities, including Eric Adams in New York, Sylvester Turner in Houston and Karen Bass in Los Angeles.In those cities, Black people are outnumbered by other nonwhite groups, and in New York City and Chicago their ranks are dwindling.Each of these four mayors was elected or re-elected around the height of two seismic cultural phenomena — Black Lives Matter and the pandemic. Of the four, Lightfoot would be one of the first to face voters and test the fallout. (Turner is term-limited and can’t run again.)It clearly did not go well.On one level, the results of Tuesday’s election speak to how potent the issue of crime can be and how it can be used as a scare tactic. Lightfoot said that it was absolutely used as a political tool in her race: “You’ve got people who are using it as a cudgel against me every single day. You’ve got the only white candidate in the race who’s acting like he’s going to be a great white savior on public safety.”That white candidate is Paul Vallas, who finished at the top of the crowded field on Tuesday with 34 percent of the vote. Vallas had run a tough-on-crime, law-and-order campaign in which he told one crowd that his “whole campaign is about taking back our city, pure and simple.”Lightfoot called the remark “the ultimate dog whistle.”In our interview, she was brutal in her racial assessment of Vallas: “He is giving voice and platform to people who are hateful of anyone who isn’t white and Republican in our city, in our country.” She is also surprisingly candid about how race operates in the city itself: “Chicago is a deeply divided and segregated city.”It is that division, in her view, fomented by candidates who see politics in the city as a zero-sum game, that provided Vallas with an opening to win over the city’s white citizens. As she put it, “People who are not used to feeling the touch of violence, particularly people on the North Side of our city, they are buying what he’s selling.”Indeed, Vallas won many of the wards in the northern part of the city, while Lightfoot won most of the wards on the largely Black South Side.But two things can be true simultaneously: There can be legitimate concerns about rising crime, and crime can be used as a political wedge issue, particularly against elected officials of color, which has happened often.In this moment, when the country has still not come to grips with the wide-ranging societal trauma that the pandemic exacerbated and unleashed, mayors are being held responsible for that crime. If all politics is local, crime and safety are the most local. And when the perception of crime collides with ingrained societal concepts of race and gender, politicians, particularly Black women, can pay the price.In 2021, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta chose not to seek re-election, becoming the city’s first Black mayor to serve only a single term, after wrestling with what she called the “Covid crime wave.” Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans is facing a possible recall, largely over the issue of crime in her city, and organizers said this week that they have gathered enough signatures to force a recall vote.Even in cities where Black mayors aren’t likely to be removed from office, their opponents are searching for ways to limit their power, using criminal justice as justification.The Mississippi House recently passed a bill that would create a separate court system and an expanded police force in the city of Jackson, one of the Blackest cities in America. The new district “would incorporate all of the city’s significantly populated white-majority neighborhoods,” as an analysis by The Guardian pointed out. Jackson’s mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, said the plan reminded him of apartheid.Crime often comes in waves, but a question lingers about how people, even liberals, respond when a crest arrives under Black leadership: Are Black mayors too quickly and easily blamed for rising crime, and if so, why? Because of an unwillingness to crack down on criminals or because of a more insidious, latent belief in ineffectual Black leadership in times of crisis?Lightfoot told me she understood that as a woman and as a person of color, “I’m always going to be viewed through a different lens, that the things I do and say, that the toughness that I exhibit, is viewed as divisive, that I’m the mean mayor, that I can’t collaborate with anyone.”Even so, she conceded, “If you feel like your life has been challenged because of the public safety issues coming to your doorstep, it doesn’t matter what the numbers are — you need to feel safe.”But feelings on issues of politics, crime and race also tap into our biases, both conscious and subconscious. In that vein, Lightfoot may be a harbinger, or at least a warning, for the other big-city Black mayors: As the Covid crime wave wears on, will their mostly non-Black citizens feel that their safety is being prioritized and secured under Black leadership?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Black Mayors of 4 Biggest U.S. Cities Draw Strength From One Another

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      The mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston have banded together as they confront violent crime, homelessness and other similar challenges.As the race for Los Angeles mayor began to tighten late last year, Karen Bass, the presumptive favorite, received some notes of encouragement from a kindred spirit: Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago.Ms. Lightfoot had successfully navigated a similar political path in 2019, becoming the first Black woman to be elected mayor of her city, much as Ms. Bass was trying to do in Los Angeles.And even though Ms. Bass’s billionaire opponent had poured $100 million into the race and boasted endorsements from celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry, Ms. Lightfoot urged her Democratic colleague to keep the faith in a series of personal visits and text messages.“She was up against somebody who was very, very moneyed and was leaning into people’s fears about crime, about homelessness — frankly, very similar to the circumstances that I’m facing now in my city in getting re-elected,” Ms. Lightfoot said in an interview. “I just wanted to make sure that she knew that I was there for her.”Ms. Lightfoot and Ms. Bass belong to an informal alliance of four big-city mayors tackling among the toughest jobs in America. They happen to be of similar mind in how to address their cities’ common problems, like violent crime, homelessness and rising overdose deaths.They also happen to be Black: When Ms. Bass took office in December, the nation’s four largest cities all had Black mayors for the first time.The Democratic mayors — Ms. Bass, Ms. Lightfoot, Eric Adams of New York City and Sylvester Turner of Houston — say their shared experiences and working-class roots as Black Americans give them a different perspective on leading their cities than most of their predecessors.Mr. Adams visited Mayor Lightfoot last year during a fund-raising trip to Chicago.Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated PressIn interviews, the four mayors discussed how their backgrounds helped shape their successful campaigns, and how they provide a unique prism to view their cities’ problems.“We have to be bold in looking at long entrenched problems, particularly on poverty and systemic inequality,” Ms. Lightfoot said. “We’ve got to look those in the face and we’ve got to fight them, and break down the barriers that have really held many of our residents back from being able to realize their God-given talent.”Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.Michigan G.O.P.: Michigan Republicans picked Kristina Karamo to lead the party in the battleground state, fully embracing an election-denying Trump acolyte after her failed bid for secretary of state.Dianne Feinstein: The Democratic senator of California will not run for re-election in 2024, clearing the way for what is expected to be a costly and competitive race to succeed the iconic political figure.Lori Lightfoot: As the mayor of Chicago seeks a second term at City Hall, her administration is overseeing the largest experiment in guaranteed basic income in the nation.Union Support: In places like West Virginia, money from three major laws passed by Congress is pouring into the alternative energy industry and other projects. Democrats hope it will lead to increased union strength.To do so can require navigating a delicate balancing act.Ms. Bass was a community organizer who witnessed the riots after the Rodney King verdict; Mr. Adams drew attention to police brutality after being beaten by the police as a teenager.As a congresswoman, Ms. Bass took a leading role in 2020 after George Floyd’s death on legislation that aimed to prevent excessive use of force by police and promoted new officer anti-bias training. It was approved by the House, but stalled in the Senate, and President Biden later approved some of the measures by executive order.In Chicago, Ms. Lightfoot served as head of the Chicago Police Board and was a leader of a task force that issued a scathing report on relations between the Chicago police and Black residents. Mr. Adams founded a group called “100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care” in the 1990s.As mayors, all now in their 60s, they have criticized the “defund the police” movement, yet have also called for systemic policing changes.In Chicago and New York, Ms. Lightfoot and Mr. Adams have pushed for police spending increases and have flooded the subway with officers. That has invited criticism from criminal justice advocates who say they have not moved quickly enough to reform the departments.“As a city, we have to have a police department that is successful,” Ms. Lightfoot said. “And to me, successful is defined by making sure that they’re the best trained police department, that they understand that the legitimacy in the eyes of the public is the most important tool that they have, and that we also support our officers — it’s a really hard and dangerous job.”Mr. Adams agreed. “We can’t have police misconduct, but we also know we must ensure that we support those officers that are doing the right thing and dealing with violence in our cities,” he said.The four mayors have highlighted their backgrounds to show that they understand the importance of addressing inequality. Mr. Adams was raised by a single mother who cleaned homes. Ms. Bass’s father was a postal service letter carrier. Ms. Lightfoot’s mother worked the night shift as a nurse’s aide. Mr. Turner was the son of a painter and a maid.Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, a prominent left-leaning group, said the mayors’ lived experience was all the more reason for them to “take a more expansive view of Black life that is expressed in their policies and in their budgeting,” and to prioritize schools, libraries, youth jobs and mental health care.“We want our communities invested in, in the way that other communities are invested in and the investment should not simply come through more police,” he said.In December, Ms. Bass became the first Black woman to be elected mayor of Los Angeles.Lauren Justice for The New York TimesThe four serve as only the second elected Black mayors of their respective cities. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago each went more than 30 years between electing their first Black mayor and the second; Houston went nearly two decades.The mayors have worked together through the U.S. Conference of Mayors as well as the African American Mayors Association, which was founded in 2014 and has more than 100 members — giving the four Black mayors an additional pipeline to coordinate with other cities’ leaders.“Because we’re still experiencing firsts in 2023, it’s our obligation that we’re successful,” said Frank Scott Jr., the first elected Black mayor of Little Rock, Ark., who leads the African American Mayors Association. “It’s our obligation that to the best of our ability we’re above reproach, to ensure that we’re not the last and to ensure that it doesn’t take another 20 to 30 years to see another Black mayor.”Of the four, Ms. Bass, a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, is perhaps the most left-leaning, characterizing herself as a “pragmatic progressive” who said she saw similarities between Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and herself as a young activist.“That’s who I was — that’s who I still am,” Ms. Bass said. “It’s just that, after a while, you want to begin to make a very concrete difference in people’s lives, as opposed to your positions and educating.” On her first day as mayor, Ms. Bass won praise for declaring a state of emergency on homelessness that gives the city expanded powers to speed up the construction of affordable housing. She also supports legislation by the Los Angeles City Council, known as “just cause” eviction protections, that bars landlords from evicting renters in most cases.A similar law in New York has stalled in the State Legislature, though supporters are hoping to pass it this year and have called on Mr. Adams to do more to help them.All the cities share a homeless crisis, as well as potential solutions. Houston has become a national model during Mr. Turner’s tenure for a “housing first” program that moved 25,000 homeless people directly into apartments and houses over the last decade.Now New York City is starting a pilot program based on Houston’s approach that will move 80 homeless people into permanent supportive housing without having to go through the shelter system.Mr. Turner, a lawyer who became mayor in 2016, said he called Mr. Adams after he won a close primary in New York in 2021 to offer his support. He defended Mr. Adams’s plan to involuntarily remove severely mentally ill people from the streets — a policy that has received pushback in New York.“I applaud him on that,” Mr. Turner said. “Is it controversial or some people will find controversy in it? Yes. But what is the alternative? To keep them where they are?”Mr. Turner, who is in his final year in office because of term limits, said he set out with a goal of making Houston more equitable. “I didn’t want to be the mayor of two cities in one,” he said.“I recognized the fact that there are many neighborhoods that have been overlooked and ignored for decades,” he later added. “I grew up in one of those communities and I still live in that same community.”Mr. Turner has claimed success for a “housing first” program that moved 25,000 homeless people directly into apartments and houses over the last decade in Houston.Go Nakamura for The New York TimesAnxiety among voters about the future of their cities could make it difficult for the mayors to succeed. Ms. Lightfoot, who is seeking a second term, faces eight opponents when Chicago holds its mayoral election on Feb. 28, and her own campaign shows her polling at 25 percent — well below the 50 percent she would need to avoid a runoff.Mr. Adams, a former police officer who was elected on the strength of a public safety message, has seen his support fall to 37 percent as he enters his second year in office, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.Concerns about crime are affecting both mayors. Chicago had nearly 700 murders last year, a major increase from about 500 murders in 2019 before the pandemic. In New York City, there were 438 murders last year, compared with 319 in 2019.In March, Mr. Adams met with Ms. Lightfoot while visiting Chicago for a fund-raiser at the home of Desirée Rogers, the former White House social secretary for President Barack Obama. At a joint news conference with Ms. Lightfoot, Mr. Adams reiterated his position that the communities most affected by policing abuses also tend to need the most protection.“All of these cities are dealing with the same crises, but there’s something else — the victims are Black and brown,” Mr. Adams said.Of the four mayors, Mr. Adams, in particular, has sought to align his colleagues behind an “urban agenda,” and to call in unison for federal help with the migrant crisis.Mr. Adams has also argued that the mayors’ messaging should be a model for Democratic Party leadership to follow, rather than what he called the “woke” left wing that he has quarreled with in New York.“The Democratic message was never to defund police,” he said, adding: “We’re just seeing the real Democratic message emerge from this group of mayors.” More

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      Repeat Election in Berlin Speaks to the ‘Chaos’ Many Residents Feel

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      The do-over vote on Sunday is only the tip of the iceberg for a city some see as in crisis: short on housing, schools and efficient governance.BERLIN — The city’s airport came in more than $4 billion over budget and nine years late. Then there is the chronic housing shortage, the overcrowded schools and the crumbling subway system. If all of that is not enough to dispel any notion that Berlin is a model of efficiency, then maybe this Sunday’s court-ordered repeat election is.The vote is meant to make right the many things that went wrong in September 2021, when city and district governments were up for election but there were too few ballots and polling booths, leading to long lines at polling stations, amid the confusion of roads closed because of the Berlin Marathon.That election was annulled last year, and a panel of judges ordered a new vote, a first in modern German history. (Federal elections, also held that day, will not be done over on Sunday.) When the ballots are cast this time, there will be outside observers from the European Council, the top human rights panel on the continent — the sort of monitoring more typically done in places where there is fear of vote tampering or intimidation.“Berlin is unfortunately turning into a ‘chaos city’ — starting with politics,” Markus Söder, the belligerent governor of Bavaria, who appears to relish attacking the politics of the German capital, said recently.The disputed 2021 election was a win for the Social Democrats, the party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which has been running Berlin’s government for 22 years. Franziska Giffey became the first woman elected the city’s mayor, and she formed a coalition with the Greens and the far-left Die Linke party.A crowded evening commute on Thursday at the Alexanderplatz stop.Ingmar Nolting for The New York TimesTrain access cut off because of construction repairs at the Nordbahnhof station.Ingmar Nolting for The New York TimesBut current polls have the conservative party in the lead ahead of Sunday’s election, and 68 percent of Berliners say their trust in their political institutions has declined since the last vote, according to a recent poll.Facing a major housing crisis, the city of 3.8 million is short about 125,000 apartments. Schools are understaffed, and parts of the public transportation system are offline for extensive repairs. Construction sites can snarl busy streets for months, if not longer. Major building permits can take years to process. And city services can be glacially slow, with some Berliners complaining that it can take months to get appointments for something as simple as registering a new address.“What I hate is the chaos, especially when it comes to the bureaucracy,” said Silvia Scheerer, 64, dressed in an elegant black fur-trimmed winter coat and waiting patiently for the subway, at a spot where since October trains have been running on a reduced schedule.Labor Organizing and Union DrivesApple: After a yearlong investigation, the National Labor Relations Board determined that the tech giant’s strictly enforced culture of secrecy interferes with employees’ right to organize.N.Y.C. Nurses’ Strike: Nurses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and Mount Sinai in Manhattan ended a three-day strike after the hospitals agreed to add staffing and improve working conditions.Amazon: A federal labor official rejected the company’s attempt to overturn a union victory at a warehouse on Staten Island, removing a key obstacle to contract negotiations between the union and the company.Electric Vehicles: In a milestone for the sector, employees at an E.V. battery plant in Ohio voted to join the United Automobile Workers union, citing pay and safety issues as key reasons.A social worker who regularly deals with city workers in her job, she says she sees how swamped they are.“It’s worse than it’s ever been,” said Ms. Scheerer, who spent half of her life in Communist East Germany, where she said the city bureaucracy and transportation actually worked quite well.A construction site in Berlin on Thursday. It’s not uncommon for such work to disrupt busy streets for months at a time.Ingmar Nolting for The New York TimesMorning traffic on the A100 highway on a recent weekday.Ingmar Nolting for The New York TimesPart of the problem is how city government is structured. At the top level, the city is run by a mayor and senators who are elected by a city Parliament, similar to a state house in other German states. Below that are 12 district councils, each headed by a district mayor.“‘I am not in charge of that, I am not responsible for this’ and always pointing to somewhere else — that’s a classic in Berlin,” said Lorenz Maroldt, the editor in chief of the Berlin daily newspaper Tagesspiegel and a longtime chronicler of city politics and their dysfunction.This complex approach to governing makes building a single bike path that crosses several districts a nightmare, says Stefanie Remlinger, the district mayor of Mitte, in Central Berlin, which has nearly 388,000 citizens and 2,000 district staff members to handle their needs.A factor in both the housing and school crises: Berlin has absorbed thousands of new residents and refugees in recent years. Ms. Remlinger’s district currently has 55 schools; it needs five additional ones, she said, just to accommodate all of the newly arriving children.Stefanie Remlinger, the district mayor of Mitte, in her office.Ingmar Nolting for The New York TimesA visualization of the movement of rental bicycles in Berlin. The city’s complex system of governing makes it hard to do something like build a single bike path across several districts.Ingmar Nolting for The New York Times“Since 2015 we’ve been in crisis mode,” Ms. Remlinger said. “We’ve had a major refugee crisis to deal with, corona, the war, and with it another refugee crisis and inflation.” As in many other countries, workers are striking for better wages. This past week, both educators and other public-sector workers walked off their jobs over several days, meaning garbage piled up, medical procedures were rescheduled and students were not taught.Jochen Christiansen, 59, a sanitation worker, moved to West Berlin in the 1980s to avoid military service, as men living in the city were exempt from West Germany’s draft. Four decades ago, he said, the city worked: Rent was affordable, the schools were fully staffed and the bureaucracy was efficient.During a recent protest of city workers demanding a pay raise of 10.5 percent, he showed little sympathy for the city’s history of undertaking big-budget projects, like the beleaguered new airport, while neglecting its salaried public-sector workers.“I think it’s important to show that we’ll defend ourselves,” he said as he marched with a crowd of 2,500 public workers through central Berlin.A protest by public-sector workers in Berlin on Thursday.Ingmar Nolting for The New York TimesRalf Kleindiek is Berlin’s first chief digital officer.Ingmar Nolting for The New York TimesBut if many of Berlin’s challenges seem not unexpected for a European capital city dealing with new arrivals, inflation and a shortage of skilled workers, the failure to run an election crystallized the feeling that the administration could do better.“The vote itself might be one of the most instructive lessons on how this city doesn’t work,” said Ralf Kleindiek, who has taken on the formidable task of trying to bring the administration into the 21st century as its first chief digital officer.But luckily, says Mr. Maroldt, the newspaper editor, the city’s many problems have not robbed it of its many charms.“Despite its best efforts,” he said, “politics has not managed to spoil the fun of Berlin for most people.”Closed streets and construction work have become common sights in Berlin.Ingmar Nolting for The New York Times More

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      Arkansas City Elected an 18-Year-Old Mayor to Turn Things Around

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      EARLE, Ark. — The shoe factory closed and the supermarket pulled out. So did neighbors whose old homes were now falling apart, overtaken by weeds and trees. Likewise, the best students at Earle High School often left for college and decided their hometown did not have enough to lure them back.Jaylen Smith, 18, could have left, too. Instead, when he graduated from high school last spring he resolved to stay put in Earle, a small city surrounded by farmland in the Arkansas Delta, where his family has lived for generations. More

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      Fed Up With Democratic Emails? You’re Not the Only One.

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      Donald Trump seemed to usher in a new era of Democratic grass-roots engagement. More than four million people marched in the streets the day after his inauguration. Several thousand chapters of Indivisible, one of the biggest new “Resistance” organizations, sprung up, covering every congressional district. On the Democratic fund-raising platform ActBlue, the number of donors more than quadrupled in roughly four years, reaching 15 million during the 2020 election cycle.But less than two years later, Democrats and national progressive organizations seem to have done very little to translate that energy into a lasting movement. What happened?National Democratic and progressive groups together burned through the surge of liberal organizing under Mr. Trump, treating impassioned newcomers like cash cows, gig workers and stamp machines to be exploited, not a grass-roots base to be tended. Worse, research by academics and political professionals alike suggests many of the tactics they pushed to engage voters proved ineffective.Some may even have backfired. Millions of dollars and hours were wasted in 2018 and 2020. And yet, as the party stares down a bleak midterm landscape, with abortion rights on the line, the Democratic establishment and progressive organizations alike are doubling down on the same old tactics.For all the conflict between mainstream Democratic and progressive leaders, most share a common way of thinking about electoral politics. To the “Beltway Brain,” as we think of it, voters are data points best engaged via atomized campaigns orchestrated from afar.The core role of supporters is to be whipped into panicked giving by messages like this one from Nancy Pelosi on April 28: “I asked — several times. Barack Obama told you the stakes. Joe Biden made an urgent plea,” she said. “I don’t know how else to say this, so I’ll be blunt: All these top Democrats would not be sounding the alarm if our democracy wasn’t in immediate danger of falling to Republicans in this election. I need 8,371 patriots to step up before time runs out, rush $15, and help me close the fund-raising gap before the End of Month Deadline in 48 hours.”Inside Democratic fund-raising circles, this tactic is known as “churn and burn”: a way of squeezing money out of individual donors that reliably produces brief spikes in donations but over the course of an election cycle overwhelms their willingness to keep giving. Even worse, these apocalyptic messages fuel despair. If “democracy is in the balance” and then Democrats fail to pass restorative measures, voters inevitably must wonder, why keep trying?The notion that digitally targeted, professionally scripted, just-in-time voter contacting is the best use of volunteer energy became conventional wisdom among Democratic campaign gurus after Barack Obama’s upset victory over Hillary Clinton in 2008. People who cut their teeth on that campaign now dominate Democratic politicking. After the 2016 election, establishment Democrats and new “Resistance” groups alike pioneered new tactics, encouraging volunteers not just to cold-call swing voters across the country and sign up for shifts knocking doors in faraway swing districts, but to send semi-automated texts and handwritten postcards, as digital tools for “distributed organizing” made such microtargeted anonymous contacting ever cheaper.Recent studies show that the effectiveness of such approaches varies from small to nil to negative. People who volunteer on campaigns are often nothing like other Americans in their politics. The gulf is particularly wide on the Democratic side, where infrequent and swing voters of all ethnicities, ages and life experiences tend to encounter highly educated, liberal and white volunteers.In elections where voters are already getting bombarded with ads, the odds that a volunteer contact can help get people to the polls may be canceled out by the odds the contact will turn them off entirely. One study found that handwritten postcards supporting state legislative candidates in 2018 actually reduced turnout. Meanwhile, Sister District Action Network found that a postcard campaign they coordinated in 2019 had a “marginally significant negative effect” on turnout in primaries, and no impact in the general election.Yet national groups continue to push this approach. This year, Vote Forward aims to have volunteers print and send some 10 million heavily scripted voter turnout letters. With most of the personalization gone and the risks of counterproductive freelancing clear, one could well ask why these groups are using volunteers at all. Are “letters to voters” just chum to draw in small-dollar donors? A gig-economy scheme that works only because volunteers pay for their own stamps?There’s a better way. One of us, Dr. Putnam, has been observing progressive infrastructure in Pittsburgh’s once ruby-red northern suburbs since 2017, when ordinary voters appalled by Donald Trump came together by the dozens and then hundreds, hoping to contest every seat, in every election. In 2017 they helped elect the first Democrat within memory to the North Allegheny school board; in 2018 they helped flip a State Senate seat and oust an incumbent Republican congressman. In 2019 they battled for town council seats.Each year, they gained experience and had more political conversations that were within their own community, but outside their own bubble. They heard firsthand their neighbors’ reactions to national Democrats’ sound bites. They learned not to overestimate the impact of anonymous contacting.For 2021, they recruited four school board candidates, intentionally choosing people whose profile and networks did not just echo those of activists. Rather than spamming voters via distant digital volunteers, the team primarily sent the candidates themselves and trusted endorsers (community leaders and popular local incumbents) to knock on doors. Volunteers instead focused on hyperlocal fund-raising and house parties, capitalizing on their existing ties rather than ignoring them.Dr. Putnam handed out cards for the candidates on Election Day, watching as the campaign team executed a turnout effort reminiscent of an old-fashioned party machine. In the face of a huge infusion of Republican cash and attacks on mask mandates, Covid policies and “critical race theory,” two of the four were elected, and one of them is thought to be the first African American ever to serve on the North Allegheny school board. Their supporters are already at work on the next election.Doubters may ask if this kind of retail politics can scale up. But the real question is, how have national Democrats and progressives fooled themselves into believing a party can survive without it? Logistics experts know the last mile of a delivery is generally the most expensive and that the rest is worthless without it. A container truck is not going to get a package into a cul-de-sac and up the steps to the porch, no matter how sophisticated the routing software, without an actual local person involved.A political party that has few, if any, year-round structures in place to reach voters through trusted interlocutors — and learn from how they respond — can do no more than lurch from crisis to crisis, raising money off increasingly apocalyptic emails, with dire warnings “sounding the alarm” about a democracy in “immediate danger of falling.”Republicans, of course, also treat the news as an endless series of crises. But their calls to oppose socialism or critical race theory or transgender-inclusive bathrooms generate energy that flows into local groups that have a lasting, visible presence in their communities, such as anti-abortion networks, Christian home-schoolers, and gun clubs. Right-wing activists are encouraged to run for local office by overlapping regional, statewide and national personal networks that conservatives have built with decades of sustained investment. When not connected to such networks, Democrats receiving apocalyptic messages can feel more battered than activated, leading to demoralization and despair.If democracy is indeed on fire, the thing to do is to stop asking people to buy water bottles and organize them into fire brigades instead. Neither the national Democratic Party nor progressive leaders seem to have learned that lesson. They aren’t wrong to call the next election the most important in our lifetimes. And abortion bans and the Jan. 6 committee hearings may well recharge their base. But it’s what the base manages to build with that energy that will matter.Lara Putnam (@lara_putnam) is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Micah L. Sifry (@Mlsif) is the author of “The Big Disconnect: Why the Internet Hasn’t Transformed Politics (Yet).” He writes The Connector, a newsletter about democracy, organizing and tech.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Why Boris Johnson Will Be Tested in UK by Local Elections

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      The British prime minister is under fire for lockdown-breaking parties. But many voters are skeptical that the opposition can solve issues such as soaring prices.BURY, England — Oliver Henry tries not to talk politics at his barbershop to avoid inciting arguments among his customers. But when Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain was fined recently by the police for breaking his own coronavirus laws, the bickering at Chaps Barbers was unavoidable.“Some people despise him, and other people really love him,” he said, referring to Mr. Johnson, whose Conservative Party faces an important electoral test Thursday as the prime minister battles a swirling scandal over parties in Downing Street that flouted lockdown rules.As he trimmed a client’s hair last week, Mr. Henry said he voted for Mr. Johnson’s Conservatives in the last general election, in 2019, and, grateful for government financial support during the pandemic, was not planning to abandon the prime minister yet.Whether millions of others feel the same when they vote Thursday in elections for local municipalities could determine Mr. Johnson’s fate. His leadership is again on the line, with his own lawmakers mulling a no-confidence motion that could evict him from Downing Street — and a poor result could tip them over the edge.Bury, England. Millions voting in local elections on Thursday could determine Mr. Johnson’s fate.Mary Turner for The New York TimesOne thing that has saved Mr. Johnson so far is his reputation as an election winner, someone able to reach out to voters in places like Bury, the so-called red wall regions of the north and middle of England. These areas traditionally voted for the opposition Labour Party but largely supported Brexit and turned to the Conservatives in the 2019 general election. What happens in them on Thursday will be watched closely.Elections are taking place only in some parts of the country, with around 4,400 seats being contested in more than 140 municipalities. Voting is also taking place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Conservatives are braced for losses. They are trailing Labour in opinion polls, the prime minister is mired in scandal and voters are feeling the pain of spiking energy, food and other prices.But things may still not be as easy for Labour as they might seem. Many of the seats contested on Thursday were last up for grabs in 2018, when Labour did well, giving it limited room to advance.Voting is for elected representatives known as councilors in municipalities that control issues like garbage collection, highway maintenance and planning rules. Turnout will most likely be low, and many of those who cast a ballot will be thinking more about potholes than Downing Street parties.A statue of Robert Peel, a 19th century Conservative prime minister, in his hometown, Bury.Mary Turner for The New York TimesLabour is also struggling to make a big breakthrough and win back its old heartland “red wall” areas, like Bury, the birthplace of Robert Peel, a 19th century Conservative prime minister. In recent decades, the area has suffered from deindustrialization.In Bury South, it elected Labour lawmakers to Parliament for years before 2019, when the Conservatives narrowly snatched the seat. But the winner, Christian Wakeford, recently defected to Labour. James Daly, a Conservative, won the other parliamentary seat, Bury North, in 2019 by a margin of just 105 votes.If Labour is ever going to fully regain control over Bury, now should be a good time. At the Brandlesholme Community Center and Food Bank, close to Chaps Barbers, its chairwoman, Jo Warburton, sums up the situation locally in a word: “diabolical.”Meat and poultry stalls at Bury Market. Many people there are struggling with high prices.Mary Turner for The New York TimesSoaring energy bills are forcing some people to choose between eating and heating, she said, adding, “Nobody can afford to live.” Ms. Warburton recently put out a plea for additional donations after having almost run out of food to offer. Even people with jobs are increasingly in need of groceries, including one person who said she had been surviving on soup for a week, Ms. Warburton added.Because the food bank is a charity, Ms. Warburton tries to keep out of politics. But she said that while local Labour Party politicians support the center, she has had little contact with Conservatives. As for the government in London, “they haven’t got a clue about life,” she said.Across town, one Bury resident, Angela Pomfret, said she sympathized in particular with those who have young families. “I don’t know how people are able to survive,” she said. “I am 62, and I am struggling.”Ms. Pomfret said she had been unable to visit her mother, who died during the coronavirus pandemic, because of Covid restrictions, so she was at first annoyed by news about illicit parties taking place in Downing Street at the same time.But while Ms. Pomfret says she will vote for Labour, she bears no grudge against Mr. Johnson and says she is not against him personally.Polling station signs in a Bury community center that also houses the Brandlesholme food bank ahead of elections.Mary Turner for The New York TimesNor is there much hostility toward him at Bury Market, where Andrew Fletcher, serving customers at a meat and poultry stall, acknowledges that trade is a little depressed at present but does not blame the government. “I will be voting Tory,” he said. “I don’t think Labour could do any better.”Trevor Holt, who has spent 39 years as an elected member of Bury Council for the Labour Party and twice served as the town’s mayor, is convinced that Mr. Johnson is a big liability for the Tories.“I think Boris Johnson is very unpopular, people think he’s either a fool or a crook — and he’s probably both, isn’t he?” he said with a laugh, drinking tea in a cafe at a building he opened as mayor in 1997. The cost of living is also eroding support for the Conservatives, he added. His expectations are cautious, however, and he thinks that Labour will “gain some seats” rather than sweep to a big victory.Trevor Holt, who has spent 39 years as an elected member of Bury Council for the Labour Party and twice served as the town’s mayor, is convinced that Mr. Johnson is a big liability for the Tories.Mary Turner for The New York TimesLabour currently controls Bury Council, and that means that it takes the blame for many things that go wrong locally as well as for some unpopular policies.Moves to build more homes on green spaces have provoked opposition, as have plans for a clean air zone, a proposal — now being reconsidered after protests — that would charge for journeys in some more polluting vehicles.To complicate matters, there is also a fringe party campaigning for more support for an area of Bury called Radcliffe. In the Royal Oak pub, Mike Smith, a councilor for the party, Radcliffe First, who is running for re-election, describes his patch as “an archetypal forgotten ‘red-wall’ town,” comparing it to Springfield, the fictional setting of “The Simpsons.”“If they need to build a sewage works, they’ll try to put it in Radcliffe,” he said.Campaigners and candidates for the Radcliffe First political party at the Royal Oak pub in Bury after canvassing for votes.Mary Turner for The New York TimesAt another table in the pub, which filled steadily before a soccer match was screened, Martin Watmough described Mr. Johnson as “an absolute charlatan,” and said he would support Labour in the local elections, adding that the Conservatives had lost the trust of many voters.But Nick Jones, the leader of the Conservatives on Bury Council, is bullish, considering the political headwinds against his party generated by the lockdown party scandal. He is hoping to win a handful of seats.Mr. Jones is campaigning not so much for the prime minister as against Labour’s record locally. Speaking in another pub in Bury, he highlighted issues including the clean air zone plan, the state of the highways (“a disgrace,” in his opinion) and the frequency of refuse collections.Nick Jones, leader of the Conservatives on Bury Council, is bullish and hoping to win a handful of seats. Mary Turner for The New York TimesWhen the conversation turns to Mr. Johnson, who visited Bury last week, Mr. Jones is careful to be loyal.But his political pitch has little to do with a scandal-prone prime minister, whose immediate fate could depend on results of elections like these.The message to the voters in Bury, Mr. Jones said, is: “We are not talking about Downing Street, we are talking about your street.” More