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Editorial Contest Winner: In Nothing We Trust

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Editorial Contest Winner: In Nothing We Trust

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We are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Fourth Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day. You can find them all here.

Below, an essay by Francesca Kelley, age 18.

_________
In Nothing We Trust
Like many American children, I have, at one point or another, dabbled in door-to-door sales. I eventually graduated from peddling Girl Scout cookies with my mom to knocking on my neighbors' doors alone, attempting to lure them into supporting my high school marching band with citrus fruits. However, selling alone, I soon encountered a problem: I knew almost none of them by name. Additionally, even after explaining that I lived just down the block, I often noticed the homeowner eyeing me with suspicion, questioning what business I could possibly have on their front porch.

Gone are the halcyon days of perpetually unlocked doors and packs of unsupervised kids roving the neighborhood. America has entered a new era: the Age of Mistrust. Nowadays, suburban homes are outfitted with security systems fit for federal penitentiaries, and children aren't allowed out of the house without a chaperone. It is no coincidence that as we have lost trust in those around us, loneliness levels have also been on the rise; whereas between 11 and 20 percent of people frequently felt lonely in the 1970s and 80s, that number is closer to 40 percent today.

Unfortunately, the disease of mistrust hasn't just been eroding our happiness. The American public is also rapidly losing faith in its most valued institutions. Today, in the country that once considered the newsman Walter Cronkite "the most trusted man in America," only 32 percent of people have a "great deal" or "fair amount" of trust in the media. According to the Pew Research Center, an abysmal 19 percent of Americans trust their government. So where did all our trust go, and how do we get it back?

In a bygone America, neighbors relied on each other to watch the kids or borrow some sugar. The moment we started locking our doors was the moment we began to lose faith in what once made our country great. Social scientists have noticed the steady decline in interpersonal trust has led to an inability "to engage in spontaneous, voluntary cooperation." What it boils down to is this: when someone can't even trust their neighbor, how can they trust their president, or a refugee from a foreign land?

As bleak as the situation may seem, we can learn to trust again. Communities across America demonstrate the possibilities every day, whether by rallying around a local child fighting cancer, or organizing a fund-raiser to help feed the homeless. Trust is key; a community can't unite for the common good without believing in each other.

America has lost its way, but the solution is simple: love thy neighbor.
Works Cited
Elving, Ron. "Poll: 1 In 5 Americans Trusts The Government." NPR. NPR, 23 Nov. 2015. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.

Entis, Lauren. "Chronic Loneliness Is a Modern-Day Epidemic." Fortune. 22 June 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.

Heath, Joseph. " Is Trust Still Possible in the U.S.? " The New York Times. The New York Times, 08 Nov. 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.

Levine, Cecilia. "Community Rallies For Fair Lawn Girl, Cousin Both Fighting Cancer." Fair Lawn-Glen Rock Daily Voice. 01 Apr. 2017. Web. 03 Apr. 2017.

Slade, Shelby. "Bowls for Humanity Rallies Community, Artists around Helping Homeless." Daily Herald. 01 Apr. 2017. Web. 03 Apr. 2017.

Walsh, Kenneth T. "Distrust of Media at Highest Level Ever." US News. 15 Sept. 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.

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Editorial Contest Winner | 'In Nothing We Trust' (Published 2017)

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We are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Fourth Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day. You can find them all here. Below, an essay by Francesca Kelley, age 18. _________ In Nothing We Trust Like many American children, I have, at one point or another, dabbled in door-to-door sales.

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Contests

Octavian Mihai at his home in Las Vegas. Mr. Mihai began experiencing anxiety after he finished treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma. Related Article Credit... Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

We are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Fourth Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day. You can find them all here.

Below, an essay by Reagan Briere, age 16.

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A Psychedelic Cure?
A South African crack cocaine addict walks into a clinic, disoriented and anxious. Thousands of miles away, in the sunlit suburbs of San Francisco, an author, mother of four, and former defense attorney reclines on a couch, preparing for what promises to be a change in perception. In New York City, a recent college graduate returns from an abridged European vacation to search for an answer to an impossible problem. Worlds away, the only factor that seems to unite these three individuals is a search - but for what?

All three - Thillen Naidoo, the author Ayelet Waldman, and Octavian Mihai - were dosed with a hallucinogenic drug as a last resort when cognitive behavioral therapy, medications, and other traditional remedies failed to alleviate their illnesses. All met with resounding success. Today, most classical hallucinogens are still heavily stigmatized due to their Schedule I status. However, recent evidence has begun to support the idea that the potential of hallucinogens to treat psychological disorders must be explored and legitimized.

Clinical trials at Johns Hopkins, N.Y.U., and other institutions have begun to illustrate the potential of hallucinogens to minimize the effects of depression, to help longtime smokers quit, to alleviate the symptoms of PTSD, and more. Many of these studies met with success rates of 80 percent or above when dealing with treatment-resistant patients. Tentative evidence has also begun to surface relating to the use of LSD "microdosing" to treat mood disorders and ibogaine to treat narcotics addictions.

Hallucinogenic drugs are unlikely to be employed as first resorts in the near future. However, the fact that over half of depression patients do not fully recover with an antidepressant medication and that anti-addiction drugs such as Chantix have success rates of less than 40 percent suggests that any potential solution to the world's battle with mental illness and addiction is sorely needed.

Some argue that the risks of hallucinogen use are too great to warrant their exploration as treatments for psychological disorders. However, hallucinogens do not have the same potential for addiction as alcohol, nicotine and opioids. In addition, hallucinogen persisting perception disorder - colloquially known as "flashbacks" - occurs in far lower frequencies than was originally thought in the 1970s and 1980s and is unlikely to occur in patients who take controlled doses of the hallucinogens in clinical settings.

Indeed, hallucinogens may be far safer than originally thought - not only physiologically, but also in the sense that their potential to treat high-risk disorders could save thousands of lives lost due to suicide, smoking-related cancers and overdoses each year.

Certainly, hallucinogens are no panacea. However, if their applications as treatments for psychological disorders are properly explored and their Schedule I status challenged, hallucinogenic drugs may prove to be the 21st century's next medical breakthrough.
Works Cited
Al-Harbi, Khalid S. "Treatment-Resistant Depression: Therapeutic Trends, Challenges, and Future Directions." Journal of Patient Preference and Adherence 6 (2012): 369-388. National Center for Biotechnology Information. Web. 23 Feb. 2017.

Hegarty, Stephanie. " Can a Hallucinogen from Africa Cure Addiction? " BBC News. The BBC, 3 Apr. 2012.

Hoffman, Jan. " A Dose of a Hallucinogen From a 'Magic Mushroom,' and Then Lasting Peace. " The New York Times. The New York Times, 1 Dec. 2017. Web. 15 Feb. 2017.

Mithoefer, Michael C., et al. "The Safety and Efficacy of 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine-Assisted Psychotherapy in Subjects With Chronic, Treatment-Resistant Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: The First Randomized Controlled Pilot Study." Journal of Psychopharmacology 25.4 (2012): 439-452. Web. 24 Feb. 2017.

Phillip, Abby. " Hallucinogen in 'Magic Mushrooms' Might Have Helped Smokers Quit. " The Washington Post. The Washington Post, 12 Sept. 2014. Web. 17 Feb. 2017.

Santella, Thomas. Understanding Drugs: Hallucinogens. New York: Chelsea House, 2012. Print.

Williams, Alex. " How LSD Saved One Woman's Marriage. " The New York Times. The New York Times, 7 Jan. 2017. Web. 5 March 2017.

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Editorial Contest Winner | 'A Psychedelic Cure?' (Published 2017)

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Contests We are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Fourth Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day. You can find them all here. Below, an essay by Reagan Briere, age 16. _______ A Psychedelic Cure? A South African crack cocaine addict walks into a clinic, disoriented and anxious.

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Op-Docs is the New York Times' Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning documentary film series, exploring the most important issues of our time.

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Editorial Contest Winner: "Losing the Internet" 

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Editorial Contest Winner: "Losing the Internet" 

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We are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Fourth Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day. You can find them all here.

Below, an essay by David Scharts, age 15.

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Losing the Internet
On March 28th, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a rule which would have forced internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast (similar to NET in Brazil), to obtain their clients' consent before selling their browsing history. This is a major defeat in the fight for privacy rights, and could eventually lead other markets to also start selling their clients data. We must ensure that this loss does not happen elsewhere and keep lobbying our representatives for changes and the preservation of our rights.

Experts such as the attorney Dallas Harris say that the information provided by the browsing history is vast, and could be used to discover users' sexuality, medical and banking history, and more. Furthermore, the vote potentially leaves the door open for other issues: If a corporation is allowed to know what a client does with their product, shoe companies could then be able to track their costumers, for example. To authorize these companies to do all of this without their client's consent means that privacy, as we know it, is over. Our personal information is no longer ours, since others can obtain it, buy it and sell it without restriction.

Also relevant is the influence ISPs have over Washington. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, ISPs spent over $30 million on lobbying last year alone, so it is far from unexpected that lawmakers are benefiting these companies, even if the consequences of such harms citizens.

It could be argued that the increase in profits leads to cheaper services, and that customers could simply choose an ISP that doesn't sell information. However, as reported by the National Broadband Plan, cable companies are practically monopolies. 96 percent of Americans don't have access to more than two providers, and many are lucky to find more than one. Therefore, since the competition is so restricted, a reduction in the cost of service is very unlikely, as it would not increase demand, and finding an alternative, fairer provider is impossible for most. And this is far from a new issue: Matt Richtel from The Times proposed in 1998 a different type of service for these companies, one that could end the monopoly and the onerous fees.

Citizens of all countries are already being excessively spied on by their own governments, as seen in Snooper's Charter and the Snowden leaks. And now, corrupted politicians have allowed yet another fundamental right to be lost to some of the most hated companies in America (proven by a recent 24/7 Wall St. study). It is fundamental for every internet user to call their representative in order to make sure the vote is eventually repealed, and ensure that other rights, such as net neutrality, remain.
Works Cited
Center for Responsive Politics. " Influence and Lobbying: Top Spenders 2016. "

National Broadband Plan. " Chapter 4: Broadband Competition and Innovation Policy. "

Richtel, Matt. " In Search of a Free ISP." The New York Times. 4 Nov. 1998.

Sauter, Michael and Stebbins, Samuel. " America's Most Hated Companies." 24/7 Wall St. 10 Jan. 2017.

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Editorial Contest Winner | 'Losing the Internet' (Published 2017)

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We are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Fourth Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day. You can find them all here. Below, an essay by David Scharts, age 15. _______ Losing the Internet On March 28th, the U.S.

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Video Essay: The No Good, Very Bad Truth About the Internet and Our Kids

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Video Essay: The No Good, Very Bad Truth About the Internet and Our Kids

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Video: Opinion | The No Good, Very Bad Truth About the Internet and Our Kids

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Our kids are at the mercy of tech companies, with only an outdated law to protect them.

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Save the Snow Day: Save Teenage Education (Editorial)

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Save the Snow Day: Save Teenage Education (Editorial)

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nytimes.com-Save the Snow Day Save Teenage Education

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This year was a flop. Here at Radiolab we wanted to flip that flop, so we dredged up the most mortifying, most cringeworthy, most gravity-defying flops as a Flop Off to 2021.

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Video Essay: Inside Out: Emotional Theory Comes Alive

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Video Essay: Inside Out: Emotional Theory Comes Alive

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Inside Out: Emotional Theory Comes Alive

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You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body is a Confederate Monument (Editorial)

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You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body is a Confederate Monument (Editorial)

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A moving piece from an African American woman about the hidden impacts of slavery.

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nytimes.com-You Want a Confederate Monument My Body Is a Confederate Monument

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I Am Not Proof of the American Dream (Editorial)

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I Am Not Proof of the American Dream (Editorial)

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nytimes.com-I Am Not Proof of the American Dream

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My Young Mind was Disturbed by a Book. It Changed My Life.  (Editorial)

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My Young Mind was Disturbed by a Book. It Changed My Life.  (Editorial)

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nytimes.com-My Young Mind Was Disturbed by a Book It Changed My Life

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Your Wordle Strategy Says A Lot About How You See the World (Editorial)

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Your Wordle Strategy Says A Lot About How You See the World (Editorial)

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There's a good chance you do not need a rundown of the basics of the online game Wordle. You have perhaps seen it appear in your Twitter timeline as cryptic posts from people you know, made up of little green, yellow and black boxes - these are people posting their results. If you ever played the board-and-peg game Mastermind as a kid, it's pretty much that, only with words, and while it's certainly not an idea no one has ever had, the implementation of it that has taken off in recent weeks has been pretty wild.

Here's the short version: You have six chances to guess a five-letter word. With each guess, the game tells you which letters are correct letters in the right spot (green squares), which letters are correct letters in the wrong spot (yellow squares) and which letters are not in the word at all (gray squares). For instance, if the word is LIGHT and you guess GLOAT, you will get yellow-yellow-gray-gray-green squares, showing you that the word has an L and a G, but not in those spots, and that it has a T at the end where you put it. A new game is released every day, so everybody is playing the same one at the same time.

It did not take long for me to conclude that Wordle is a metaphor for life, meaning that you can learn a lot about different ways to see the world from different ways to play Wordle. (If you are inclined to attribute this discovery on my part to prolonged social isolation along with seasonal madness as I stay inside my house to avoid breaking my kneecap while walking my dog across crusty snow and ice, I say: Stay out of my private thoughts, you.)

For one thing, there is easy mode, and there is hard mode. You switch between them by toggling a setting. The difference is that in hard mode, you have to incorporate the letters you've already gotten into your next guess, so that every guess could plausibly be right, based on what you know. This means, for instance, that if you guess RENTS on your first try and you learn that the first letter is indeed an R, then you can't guess BALMY on your next try just to see if you can nail down some more letters. You are constrained to guesses that include that R. If you post your results after playing in hard mode, they appear with a little asterisk. "This person played on HARD MODE," the game tells all your friends, just to make sure that they know without your having to communicate it to them. It is the humblebrag of Wordle.

But of course, you can choose to play in hard mode without switching the game to hard mode. You can play in hard mode on the honor system. This means that you will not get your little asterisk next to your results, but you will know you played on hard mode. You will know you carefully incorporated each piece of information into your next guess. As often happens in life, you are presented with a choice between telling everyone that you overcame an obstacle and smugly knowing and keeping to yourself the delicious knowledge that you overcame an obstacle. (Perhaps you can tell from this description which I prefer.)

There is also the matter of risk. The disadvantage of playing on easy mode is that if you make that leap from RENTS to BALMY with the information that the final word contains an R, you know that BALMY is not the final answer. You are knowingly giving up your opportunity to get the prized notification that you got the answer right in only two guesses, which is the smallest number that incorporates any skill. You are making a guess you already know is not going to turn all green and wiggle its letters up and down at you in excitement the way a correct guess will. If you are a person who always wants to keep the dream alive of that 2 score, then you want to go from RENTS to, say, ROYAL, because it could actually be ROYAL! You are flying without a net! ROYAL could be correct! But if you guess BALMY, you have a better shot at getting another letter to join that R - the better to position yourself for your third guess.

Would you rather play it safe and BALMY and be better equipped to avoid the difficult six-guess day or the dreaded didn't-even-get-it-on-the-sixth-guess day; or would you rather bet on yourself, on your capacity for glory, and fly Top Gun-style into battle with your ROYAL flag waving?

And how superstitious are you? Some people start every day with the very same first guess, usually something like CARTS or TRAIN that has a lot of common letters in it. Other people (I am one of these) take a different stab at it every day.

And do you think you need a method, a trick, a hack, a secret strategy? I am strangely preoccupied with last letters, myself. Once I have a sense of where one letter might be, it's surprising how often the possible last letters begin to contract in number. But in all likelihood, this is no better as a solution strategy than anything else; I just like it. Because it's how I do it. It's how I Wordle. And I've been Wordling for about ... two weeks. So clearly, I have massive experience to draw from.

All I'm saying is this: Your approach to this word game is critically important. Just critically important. At least that's what I tell myself when I wake up with insomnia at 4:30 in the morning and think, "Ooh, I can play Wordle!"

If you liked this excerpt from NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, consider subscribing to our newsletterto get recommendations on what's making us happy every week.

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Your Wordle strategy says a lot about how you see the world

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There's a good chance you do not need a rundown of the basics of the online game Wordle. You have perhaps seen it appear in your Twitter timeline as cryptic posts from people you know, made up of little green, yellow and black boxes - these are people posting their results.

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Why Can't a Smart Woman Love Fashion? (Editorial)

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Why Can't a Smart Woman Love Fashion? (Editorial)

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Why We Shouldn't Shield Children From Darkness

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Why We Shouldn't Shield Children From Darkness

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'Why We Shouldn't Shield Children From Darkness'

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Maybe instead of anxiously trying to protect our children from every little hurt, our job is to simply support them through such experiences

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I Was Fired After My Cartoon Satirizing Trump Went Viral. Here's Why It Matters.

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I Was Fired After My Cartoon Satirizing Trump Went Viral. Here's Why It Matters.

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Opinion | I was fired after my cartoon satirizing Trump went viral. Here’s why it matters.

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Trump makes the case for editorial cartoonists pretty much every day. Are we really willing to allow such an important journalistic tradition to die out?

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Photo Essay: How Killing Elephants Finances Terror in Africa

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Photo Essay: How Killing Elephants Finances Terror in Africa

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Armed groups help fund operations by smuggling elephant ivory. Can fake tusks with hidden GPS trackers thwart them?

When the American Museum of Natural History wanted to update the hall of North American mammals, taxidermist George Dante got the call. When the tortoise Lonesome George, emblem of the Galápagos Islands, died, it was Dante who was tasked with restoring him. But Dante, who is one of the world's most respected taxidermists, has never done what I'm asking him to do. No one has.

I want Dante to design an artificial elephant tusk that has the look and feel of confiscated tusks loaned to me by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Inside the fake tusk, I want him to embed a custom-made GPS and satellite-based tracking system. If he can do this, I'll ask him to make several more tusks. In the criminal world, ivory operates as currency, so in a way I'm asking Dante to print counterfeit money I can follow.

I will use his tusks to hunt the people who kill elephants and to learn what roads their ivory plunder follows, which ports it leaves, what ships it travels on, what cities and countries it transits, and where it ends up. Will artificial tusks planted in a central African country head east-or west-toward a coast with reliable transportation to Asian markets? Will they go north, the most violent ivory path on the African continent? Or will they go nowhere, discovered before they're moved and turned in by an honest person?

National Geographic needs your help to protect elephants and to continue reporting on wildlife crime. Together we can make a difference.

As we talk over my design needs, Dante's brown eyes sparkle like a boy's on Christmas morning. To test ivory, dealers will scratch a tusk with a knife or hold a lighter under it; ivory is a tooth and won't melt. My tusks will have to act like ivory. "And I gotta find a way to get that shine," Dante says, referring to the gloss a clean elephant tusk has.

"I need Schreger lines too, George," I say, referring to the cross-hatching on the butt of a sawn tusk that looks like growth rings of a tree trunk.

Like much of the world, George Dante knows that the African elephant is under siege. A booming Chinese middle class with an insatiable taste for ivory, crippling poverty in Africa, weak and corrupt law enforcement, and more ways than ever to kill an elephant have created a perfect storm. The result: Some 30,000 African elephants are slaughtered every year, more than 100,000 between 2010 and 2012, and the pace of killing is not slowing. Most illegal ivory goes to China, where a pair of ivory chopsticks can bring more than a thousand dollars and carved tusks sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

East Africa is now ground zero for much of the poaching. In June the Tanzanian government announced that the country has lost 60 percent of its elephants in the past five years, down from 110,000 to fewer than 44,000. During the same period, neighboring Mozambique is reported to have lost 48 percent of its elephants. Locals, including poor villagers and unpaid park rangers, are killing elephants for cash-a risk they're willing to take because even if they're caught, the penalties are often negligible. But in central Africa, as I learned firsthand, something more sinister is driving the killing: Militias and terrorist groups funded in part by ivory are poaching elephants, often outside their home countries, and even hiding inside national parks. They're looting communities, enslaving people, and killing park rangers who get in their way.

South Sudan. The Central African Republic (CAR). The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Sudan. Chad. Five of the world's least stable nations, as ranked by the Washington, D.C.-based organization the Fund for Peace, are home to people who travel to other countries to kill elephants. Year after year, the path to many of the biggest, most horrific elephant killings traces back to Sudan, which has no elephants left but gives comfort to foreign-born poacher-terrorists and is home to the janjaweed and other Sudanese cross-continental marauders.

Park rangers are often the only forces going up against the killers. Outnumbered and ill equipped, they're manning the front line in a violent battle that affects us all.

Chapter 1: Garamba's Victims

Garamba National Park, in the northeast corner of the DRC and on the border with South Sudan, is a UNESCO World Heritage site, internationally famous for its elephants and its boundless ocean of green. But when I ask a gathering of children and elders in the village of Kpaika, about 30 miles from the park's western border, how many of them have visited Garamba, no one raises a hand. When I ask, "How many of you have been kidnapped by the LRA?"-I understand why.

Father Ernest Sugule, who ministers to the village, tells me that many children in his diocese have seen family members killed by the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, the Ugandan rebel group led by Joseph Kony, one of Africa's most wanted terrorists. Sugule is the founder of a group that provides assistance to victims of Kony's army. "I've met more than a thousand children who have been abducted," he says as we talk inside his church in the nearby town of Dungu. "When they're abducted, they're very young, and they're forced to do horrible things. Most of these children are very, very traumatized when they come back home." They have nightmares, Sugule continues. They have flashbacks. Their own families are afraid that they're devils, or forever soldiers, who might kill them in the night. It is assumed that the girls were raped, so it's difficult for them to find husbands. Villagers sometimes taunt returned children with the same expression used for Kony's men: "LRA Tongo Tongo." "LRA Cut Cut"-a reference, Sugule explains, to the militants' vicious use of machetes.

Kony is a former Roman Catholic altar boy whose stated mission is to overthrow the Ugandan government on behalf of the Acholi people of northern Uganda, and to rule the country according to his version of the Ten Commandments. Since the 1980s, and beginning in Uganda, Kony's minions are alleged to have killed tens of thousands of people, slicing the lips, ears, and breasts off women, raping children and women, chopping off the feet of those caught riding bicycles, and kidnapping young boys to create an army of child soldiers who themselves grow into killers.

In 1994 Kony left Uganda and took his murderous gang on the road. He went first to Sudan, initiating a pattern of border-hopping that continues to make him difficult to track. At the time Sudan's north and south were in a civil war, and Kony offered Sudan's government, in Khartoum, a way to destabilize the south. For ten years Khartoum supplied him with food, medicine, and arms, including automatic rifles, antiaircraft guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars. It was thanks largely to efforts by the group Invisible Children and its video Kony 2012 that Kony became a household name in the West. In the United States, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama supported efforts either to arrest or kill him. The U.S. State Department named Kony a "specially designated global terrorist" in 2008, and the African Union has designated the LRA a terrorist organization.

Dead elephants finance terrorism. "Ivory operates as a savings account for Kony," says the U.S. State Department's Marty Regan.

When north and south Sudan signed a peace agreement in 2005, Kony lost his Sudanese host. In March 2006 he fled for the DRC and set up camp in Garamba National Park, then home to some 4,000 elephants. From Garamba, Kony signaled his desire for peace with Uganda, sending emissaries to neutral Juba, in southern Sudan, to negotiate with Ugandan officials while he and his men lived unmolested in and around the park, protected by a cease-fire agreement. His army farmed vegetables. Kony even invited foreign press into his camp for interviews. Meanwhile, flouting the cease-fire, his men crossed into CAR, where they kidnapped hundreds of children and made sex slaves of women they brought back to the park.

Father Sugule introduces me to three young girls, recent LRA kidnapping victims, who are sitting on a wooden bench in his church. Geli Oh, 16, spent longer with Kony's army than her two friends-two and a half terrible years. She looks at the floor while her friends whisper to each other, smile radiantly, and nibble on cookies we've brought for them. Geli Oh perks up at the word "elephant." She saw many elephants in Garamba National Park, she says, which is where the LRA took her. Tongo Tongo shot two elephants one day, she says. "They say the more elephants they kill, the more ivory they get."

Kony's force has declined from a peak of 2,700 combatants in 1999 to an estimated 150 to 250 core fighters today. Killings of civilians have likewise dropped, from 1,252 in 2009 to 13 in 2014, but abductions are rising again, and it takes the arrival of only a few of the armed militants to send fear ricocheting through communities. In village after village along the road between Father Sugule's church and what is now South Sudan, I meet Kony victims who describe being fed elephant meat and how, after elephants were killed, militants took the ivory away.

But where?

Chapter 2: The Problem Solver

To follow my artificial tusks from the jungle to their final destination, I need a tracking device capable of transmitting exact locations without dead zones. It needs to be durable and small enough to fit inside the cavities George Dante would make in the blocks of resin and lead that formed the tusks. Quintin Kermeen, 51, based in Concord, California, has the credentials, and the personality, I'm looking for. Kermeen started in the radio-tracking business when he was 15 and has since built electronic trackers and collars for wildlife from Andean bears to California condors to Tasmanian devils. He designed a GPS tracker that the U.S. Geological Survey embedded in live Burmese pythons to monitor the invasive snakes in the Florida Everglades. For his Judas pig project he built GPS satellite collars to enable pest control authorities in New Zealand to send feral pigs into the bush and locate their invasive piggy friends. We meet over Skype.

"You must be a real animal lover," I say.

"I'm not an animal lover," he snaps. "I'm a problem solver."

I laugh. "Then you're just the man for me."

After months of tinkering, Kermeen's final bespoke ivory-tracking device arrives in the mail. It consists of a battery capable of lasting more than a year, a GPS receiver, an Iridium satellite transceiver, and a temperature sensor.

While Dante set about embedding Kermeen's tracker inside his tusk mold, a third team member, John Flaig, a specialist in near-space, balloon-based photography-images taken from at least the height of spy planes-was preparing to monitor the tusks as they moved. Using Kermeen's technology, he could adjust how many times a day they tried to communicate with a satellite via the Internet. We would follow them using Google Earth.

Chapter 3: "I Want Ivory for Ammunition"

On September 11, 2014, Michael Onen, a sergeant in Kony's army, walked out of Garamba National Park carrying an AK-47, five magazines of ammunition, and a story. Onen is short and looks even smaller wearing a camouflage-patterned Ugandan army uniform that's too long for him in the sleeves. He sits on a plastic chair opposite me in a clearing at the African Union forces base in Obo, in the southeastern corner of CAR, where he is in custody. Onen had been part of an LRA poaching operation in Garamba consisting of 41 fighters, including Kony's son Salim. The operation was designed by Kony himself, Onen says. During the summer Kony's soldiers had killed 25 elephants in Garamba, and they were on their way back to Kony carrying the ivory.

Around us stroll Ugandan army soldiers, who make up the entire African Union contingent based in Obo and are committed to finding and killing Kony. The soldiers embrace Onen as one of their own, and in fundamental ways he is. He was 22 years old the night in 1998 that Kony's soldiers raided his village in Gulu, Uganda, and pulled him from his bed. His wife, abducted later, was killed.

From the moment of his capture, Onen says, he was a complainer. Being small, he balked at having to carry the heavy bundles that Kony's militants ferry from camp to camp in their patrols across central Africa, and for his whining, he was beaten with a machete. But Onen got his way. Instead of being made a soldier, he was designated a signaler-a radioman privy to Kony's secret communications.

During the failed peace talks with Uganda, while Kony hid in Garamba from 2006 to 2008, Onen had been assigned to Kony's lead peace negotiator, Vincent Otti. Otti liked elephants, Onen recalled, and forbade their killing. But after Otti left Garamba to participate in the peace talks, Kony began killing elephants for ivory.

Otti was furious, Onen says. "Why are you collecting ivory?" Otti demanded of Kony. "Aren't you interested in peace talks?"

No, I want ivory for ammunition to keep fighting, was Kony's reply, according to Onen, who was listening to transmissions. "Ivory operates as a savings account for Kony," says Marty Regan, of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. Kony's army had arrived in Garamba in 2006 with little ammunition left to continue its war, Onen tells me. "It's only the ivory that will make the LRA strong," he recalls Kony saying.

Instead of signing a peace agreement, Kony had his peace negotiator executed.

From Garamba, Kony sent an exploratory team to Darfur to look into forging a new relationship with the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), who had supported him against Uganda, hoping to exchange ivory for rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons. Meanwhile, according to Onen, Kony's men hid ivory by burying it in the ground or submerging it in rivers. His account was corroborated by Caesar Achellam, a former intelligence chief for Kony who is now in the Ugandan government's custody. Achellam told me that Kony's men planned for the future. He said they bury sealed buckets of water along parched travel routes and bury ivory for safekeeping as well.

"They can get what they want today," he said, "and keep it there for two, three, or even more than five years."

The Ugandan military finally attacked Kony's Garamba camps in late 2008. The air strike, dubbed Operation Lightning Thunder, included support from the DRC, southern Sudan, and the U.S. But it failed to rout Kony or his leadership. Kony's response was immediate and savage. Beginning on Christmas Eve, his soldiers spread out in small teams and murdered civilians. In three weeks Kony's brutes killed more than 800 people and kidnapped more than 160 children. The UN estimated that the massacre displaced more than a hundred thousand Congolese and Sudanese. On January 2, 2009, the horror bled into Garamba's headquarters, at Nagero, where Kony soldiers burned the park rangers' main building, destroyed equipment, and killed at least eight rangers and staff members.

Six years later, on October 25, 2014, Onen tells me, his poaching mission to Garamba was scheduled to deliver its ivory to Kony in Sudan. Kony was adamant in his radio transmissions. "Do not lose even one tusk," he instructed the group, according to Onen, who said the plan was to carry the ivory to a rendezvous in CAR and then on to a market town in Darfur called Songo, not far from the Sudan Armed Forces garrison in Dafaq. There, Onen says, Kony's men trade ivory with the Sudanese military for salt, sugar, and arms. The relationship is close: "SAF warns Kony if there's trouble," Onen says.

As far as Onen knew, the poaching squad he abandoned was still making its way north from Garamba through CAR to Sudan. To me, it seems reasonable to think that the radioman's defection might have slowed the progress of the 25 elephants' tusks headed to Kony.

Maybe I could get my fake tusks to Kony too.

Chapter 4: "You Are a Liar!"

An official in Dar es Salaam's international airport, in Tanzania-one of several countries I scouted for launching my tusks into the illegal trade-squints at an x-ray screen as my luggage rolls through his scanner.

"Open that one," he orders.

I unzip my suitcase to expose two fake tusks and hand him letters from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Geographic certifying that they're artificial. A crowd gathers. Officials are pointing fingers and arguing. Those looking at the tusks think I'm an ivory trafficker. Those looking at the x-ray screen, which shows the trackers inside, think I'm smuggling a bomb. After more than an hour of animated debate, they phone the airport's wildlife expert. When he shows up, he picks up a tusk and runs his finger over the butt end. "Schreger lines," he says.

"Exactly," I say. "I had them ..."

All of central Africa is a hand grenade, its pin pulled by a history of resource exploitation from abroad, dictatorships, and poverty.

He points a finger at me, and yells, "You are a liar, bwana!" (Bwana is Swahili for "sir.")

In ten years he's never made a mistake, he says: The tusks are real. I spend a night in police custody, where I'm given a desk to sleep on. National Geographic television producer J. J. Kelley takes the floor in the waiting area. He asks for water for me and is led out of the building. When he returns hours later, he has three chicken dinners and several bottles of beer, paid for by the police chief. The three of us eat together (the police chief, a Muslim, leaves the beer to us). In the morning, after officials from Tanzania's Wildlife Division and the U.S. Embassy arrive, I'm released.

Our airport incident was one of many hiccups with the artificial tusks. Several Tanzanian officers who had presided over my arrest at the airport, including the wildlife expert, returned the next day to wish us bon voyage. "You did exactly what you were supposed to do," I said, shaking their hands.

It was reassuring to find the Tanzanian law enforcers so vigilant, because the country is plagued by perhaps the worst elephant poaching in Africa, and corruption is rife. In 2013, Khamis Kagasheki, then Tanzania's minister of natural resources and tourism, declared that the illegal ivory trade "involves rich people and politicians who have formed a very sophisticated network," and he accused four members of Tanzania's Parliament of being involved in it.

Chapter 5: Garamba's Warriors

All around me I hear the click-clack of automatic weapons being loaded. I've flown from Garamba park headquarters to a dirt airstrip deep inside the park to join an antipoaching patrol. I arrive at what amounts to the park rangers' northern front, an outpost vulnerable both to Sudanese poachers and Kony's army. Here a ranger unit is permanently deployed to protect one of the park's most important assets: a radio tower that was being built. Garamba is managed through a partnership between the DRC's wildlife department and African Parks, a group based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Since the 2008-09 attack by Kony's soldiers, rangers have finished building a new headquarters and acquired two airplanes and a helicopter. But ammunition is in perilously short supply-not even enough for basic training-and the rangers' largest weapon, a belt-fed machine gun, tends to jam every third round or so. The rangers I'm going out with have each been allocated a handful of rounds for old and unreliable AK-47s, most of them seized from poachers.

We plunge eight hours through elephant grass so tall and thick it's possible to get lost just 20 feet from the man in front of you-down grass ravines, up hills exposed to the enemy, across a murky, waist-deep pond. At the sound of a twig cracking or the detection of an unexpected scent on the wind, a ranger in front of me, Agoyo Mbikoyo, signals caution, and I drop with the team into a collective crouch and wait silently. I make a mental note that Kony's soldiers and other armed groups walk hundreds of miles from Sudan into this endless grass curtain to kill elephants. I wonder if Kony's men are out there now.

The recent death toll of elephants in Garamba has been staggering, even by central African standards. Poachers killed at least 132 last year, and as of this June, rangers had discovered another 42 carcasses with bullet holes, more than 30 attributed to a single Sudanese poaching expedition-a combined loss amounting to more than 10 percent of the park's entire population of elephants, estimated now to be no more than about 1,500.

From March 2014 to March 2015, Garamba's rangers recorded 31 contacts with armed poachers, more than half of whom were with groups traveling south from the direction of South Sudan and Sudan. They included South Sudanese armed forces (SPLA) and Sudanese military, as well as defectors from those militaries and an assortment of Sudan-based rebels. Congo's own soldiers threaten the park's southern border, and villagers around the park sometimes poach elephants too. And someone-it's unclear who-is believed to be killing elephants from helicopters, as evidenced by bullet holes in the tops of skulls and the removal of tusks by what can only be chain saws.

"My interpretation," says Jean Marc Froment, then director of the park, is that the Ugandan military "is conducting operations inside Garamba and at the same time taking some ivory." But, he adds, the poachers could be SPLA, which uses the same type of helicopter seen over the park. An adviser to the Ugandan military rejects the helicopter accusation, and suggests that the elephants might have been shot in the top of the head after they were down.

Having worked extensively throughout central Africa, Froment transferred to Garamba in early 2014 after rangers discovered dozens of elephant carcasses in the park. It was supposed to be a short posting, but he saw too much death to leave. He'd grown up not far from Garamba at a time when it was possible to fly over the park and see 5,000 elephants in a single gathering. Now it was rare to see 250 in a herd.

Froment uses the word "war" to describe the fight Garamba's 150 rangers are in with poachers. Money is available to outfit the rangers with better equipment, but buying new weapons requires formal approval of the Congolese army, something Froment has been unable to get.

Halfway through our patrol, we come upon a clearing of burned grass beside the Kassi River, the site of a recent battle between Garamba rangers and SPLA poachers, in which, rangers tell me, they killed two poachers. I find a human skull fragment, and I nearly pick up a live hand grenade near where the SPLA had camped, mistaking it for a baby tortoise. It hadn't exploded-yet.

All of central Africa is a hand grenade, its pin pulled by a history of resource exploitation from abroad, dictatorships, and poverty. "The poaching issue is a governance issue," Froment says. "We protect the elephant to protect the park. We protect the park to give the people something of value." He fights for elephants because he knows that without the animals' presence, no one will support Garamba, and the park-which he calls "Africa's heart"-will be lost. Garamba is a crucible within a crucible, a park under siege in a country often in civil war in a region that has nearly forgotten peace.

On our patrol we don't encounter any poachers or rebel groups. But time is stalking our team: Months later, on April 25, 2015, while on patrol, the ranger who led me into Garamba, Agoyo Mbikoyo, was shot and killed by a gang of poachers. In June three more Garamba-based officers were killed. The culprits are believed to have been South Sudanese, according to African Parks.

Chapter 6: Planting the Fake Tusks

After visiting Garamba, I arrange with a confidential source to put my tusks into the black market near Mboki, a small village in CAR midway between Garamba and Sudan that has been the target of attacks by Kony's army and where some people who have escaped from Kony have found safety. According to data stored in a GPS unit taken off the body of LRA commander Vincent "Binany" Okumu, who was killed in a 2013 firefight with African Union forces on his return from poaching in Garamba, this village is on the path of ivory headed to Kony's base in Darfur.

Where did the tusks end up? Track the GPS unit in an interactive map.

Chapter 7: Unwitting Targets

It was just after 4 a.m. on Heban hill, in Chad, 80 miles from the Sudanese border and 60 miles northeast of Zakouma National Park, home to the country's largest remaining elephant herd, 450 animals. Six antipoaching rangers and their cook, the entirety of the Hippotrague (French for "roan antelope") unit, were awake, dressed in camouflage uniforms, and preparing for morning prayers-devoted even in the darkness. It was the rainy season, and the rangers, like the elephants they were guarding, had left the park for higher ground.

Zakouma breathes its elephants. Dry season in, rainy season out. During the rains the park is more lake than land, and elephants split into two groups to escape the floods. One moves north toward Heban, the other west toward central Chad.

The rangers on Heban hill had little reason to be concerned for their safety. They were relieving a ranger team that had raided a Sudanese poachers' camp three weeks before and seized more than a thousand rounds of ammunition; mobile phones holding photographs of bloated, dead elephants; a satellite phone with a solar panel charger; two elephant tusks; a pair of camouflage pants; and a uniform with the insignia of Abu Tira-Sudan's notorious Central Reserve Police, alleged to have committed mass killings, assaults, and rapes in Darfur. The rangers also recovered a stamped Sudanese army leave slip granting three soldiers permission to travel from Darfur to a town near the Chadian border.

Zakouma National Park has lost nearly 90 percent of its elephants since 2002. Most-up to 3,000-were poached from 2005 to 2008. During those years Sudanese poachers arrived in groups of more than a dozen armed men, camping inside the park for months at a time, killing, in one instance, 64 elephants in a single hunt. When in 2008 the Wildlife Conservation Society introduced a surveillance airplane, poaching declined, but Sudanese marauders adapted, returning in hit squads of under six men, who infiltrated from outside the park on one-day hunts. They killed fewer elephants per hunt but were much harder to track and stop. Now, says the park's director, Rian Labuschagne, of African Parks, "my biggest fear is that they'll start coming in pairs."

The men of the Hippotrague unit assumed that after the previous team's raid, the poachers had all fled home. But instead, that morning the poachers were hiding among trees surrounding the rangers' camp. The poachers opened fire, killing five rangers. A sixth, a young lookout, ran down the hill, disappeared, and is presumed dead. The team's cook, also wounded, struggled 11 miles to get help. Later, when Labuschagne examined the trajectory of bullets at the scene, he concluded that the poachers had been trained in how to set up a cross fire, which, combined with evidence found at the scene, pointed to President Omar al-Bashir's Sudan Armed Forces.

The story typically would have ended with the wanton killing of these park rangers protecting elephants. But one of the murdered men, Idriss Adoum, had a younger brother, Saleh, who resolved that, when the rains stopped, he and a cousin would hunt the killers in Sudan, where so many ivory roads lead.

Chapter 8: Sudan's Complicity

As Somalia is to piracy, Sudan has become to elephant poaching. In 2012 as many as a hundred Sudanese and Chadian poachers on horseback rode across central Africa into Cameroon's Bouba Ndjidah National Park. They set up camp and in a four-month rampage killed up to 650 elephants. According to Céline Sissler-Bienvenu, Francophone Africa director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, who led a group into the park after the slaughter, the poachers were most likely from Darfur's Rizeigat tribal group, with ties to the janjaweed-the violent, Sudanese-government-backed militias that have committed atrocities in Darfur. Sudanese and Chadian poachers were likewise implicated in the 2013 butchering of nearly 90 elephants-including 33 pregnant females as well as newborn calves-near Tikem, Chad, not far from Bouba Ndjidah.

That members of the Sudanese military trade arms for ivory with the LRA raises questions about the highest levels of Sudan's government. In 2009 Bashir became the world's first sitting head of state indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In presenting that case, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo underscored Bashir's control of the groups said to be behind Sudan's ivory trafficking: "He used the army, he enrolled the Militia/Janjaweed. They all report to him, they all obey him. His control is absolute."

Michael Onen, the defector from Kony's army, told me that the LRA and the janjaweed had battled over ivory, with one group robbing the other, and that it was the janjaweed's success in trading ivory that originally gave Kony the idea to start killing elephants. The LRA sells to the Sudan Armed Forces, Onen said.

The artificial tusks follow a route LRA defectors tell me ivory takes to Kony's Kafia Kingi base. By now the tusks may be in Khartoum.

Despite Sudan's role as a safe haven for groups known to traffic ivory, such as the LRA, janjaweed, and other poaching gangs, the country has drawn limited official attention as a poaching state. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a treaty organization that governs international trade in ivory-and its continuing ban-has identified eight countries "of primary concern" when it comes to international ivory trafficking: China, Kenya, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Uganda, Tanzania, and Vietnam. Eight more are considered of secondary concern: Cameroon, Congo, the DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Mozambique, and Nigeria. Three more are classified as of "importance to watch": Angola, Cambodia, and Laos.

Sudan is not on these lists, even though Sudanese poachers are a primary reason elephants are killed in several of the countries listed by CITES as of primary or secondary concern. Sudan is also a well-documented supplier of ivory to Egypt and is the recipient of substantial Chinese infrastructure investment, which typically comes with Chinese workers, a source of ivory smuggling in many parts of Africa. Ivory shops in Khartoum advertise in English and Chinese as well as Arabic. According to CITES Secretary-General John Scanlon, Sudan does not appear on these lists because CITES sets priorities based mainly on ivory seizures, and there have been few ivory seizures linked to Sudan in recent years. Which raises the question: If ivory is poached by Sudanese, where is it going?

Chapter 9: A Kony Hideout

My artificial tusks sit motionless for several weeks, a pair of tear-shaped blue dots on my computer screen, which displays a digital map of the eastern corner of CAR. Then, like a bobber in a fishing hole, a nibble. They shift a few miles. Suddenly they move steadily north, about 12 miles a day along the border with South Sudan, avoiding all roads. On the 15th day after they began to move, they cross into South Sudan and from there make their way into the Kafia Kingi enclave, a disputed territory in Darfur controlled by Sudan.

Kafia Kingi is so widely recognized as a Kony hideout that in April 2013 a coalition of groups, including Invisible Children, the Enough Project, and the Resolve, issued a report called "Hidden in Plain Sight: Sudan's Harboring of the LRA in the Kafia Kingi Enclave, 2009-2013." LRA defectors I spoke with consistently placed the warlord in the Kafia Kingi area too. So did the African Union military forces, whose CAR-based men in Obo are tasked with finding Kony. "It's not a secret to anyone that Kony's in Sudan," says the State Department's Marty Regan. "It's his sanctuary."

A few days later the tusks proceed to Songo, the Sudanese market town where Onen said Kony's men trade ivory. In Songo the tusks are held for three days in what looks like a clearing outside town. Then they head south six miles, back into Kafia Kingi. I order a satellite shot of their location from DigitalGlobe, a commercial vendor of space imagery, and ask for outside help interpreting it. According to Col. Mike Kabango, of the African Union forces, the image shows a large tent and two smaller ones; to Ryan Stage, a remote-sensing specialist in Colorado, it shows a large truck and two small tents. After three weeks the tusks turn north again, back into Sudan. Gathering speed, they continue north before abruptly turning east, in the direction of Khartoum.

Other roads also lead to Sudan. The relatives of murdered Zakouma ranger Idriss Adoum tracked one of the alleged Heban hill poachers to Sudan and arranged to have him brought back to Chad to stand trial. Soumaine Abdoulaye Issa had been in Darfur, he told a team of African Parks investigators, when he heard about an elephant poaching mission to Chad led by a member of the Sudan Armed Forces. Issa, who is Chadian, said he joined the team of three Sudanese men and that together they rode more than two weeks to get to Heban, where they killed nine elephants in four days. After Zakouma's rangers destroyed their camp and confiscated their equipment, the poachers were unable to return to Sudan, so three weeks later they went back to Heban hill and attacked the Hippotrague unit.

Issa claimed he was merely a lookout, not a poacher. He wasn't contrite. In a public square in Am Timan, shortly before his trial, he shouted, "I know who betrayed me! I will escape from your jail, and I will kill him." He did escape, and a rumor in Zakouma is that he fled south to CAR.

"We've heard he went to Seleka," Idriss Adoum's son Issa tells me, referring to the violent rebel coalition that overthrew the CAR government on March 24, 2013. If true, Soumaine Issa will find poachers working with Seleka. Seleka and its rival, anti-Balaka, have set fire to people, thrown them off bridges, and murdered people wantonly, turning CAR into a lawless state-the kind of place where Kony's group and other terrorist organizations thrive. In May 2013 Seleka-backed Sudanese poachers attacked Dzanga Bai, an elephant oasis in Dzanga-Ndoki National Park of southwest CAR, killing 26 elephants. Dzanga Bai-also known as the village of elephants-is a mineral-rich mudhole where the animals congregate.

Earlier this year Kony suffered the defection of his commander of operations, Dominic Ongwen, who told African Union forces that Kony's desire for ivory was reinforced by Seleka. "Seleka rebels had a stock of about 300 ivory tusks that they sold, which enabled them to get the supplies that helped them overthrow President François Bozizé in CAR," Ongwen told African Union forces, according to his debriefing. Ongwen said Kony's plan is to obtain as much ivory as possible "for his future survival should he not be able to overthrow the government of Uganda."

Ongwen also said that Kony intends to form a squad to establish contact with Boko Haram, the Nigerian terrorist group responsible for widespread killings and the kidnappings of hundreds of Nigerian women and schoolgirls. Boko Haram also uses the bush as a base-Nigeria's Sambisa Forest, a game reserve south of Lake Chad. In March 2015 Boko Haram's leader, Abubakar Shekau, pledged allegiance to ISIS, and his group was renamed Islamic State's West Africa Province, giving that Middle East terrorist group a foothold in West Africa.

Chapter 10: Where Next?

As of this writing, my artificial tusks sent out their last communication from a Sudanese town called Ed Daein, 500 miles southwest of Khartoum. I know which house they're in: Using Google Earth, I see its light-blue roof on my screen. They're in a place 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the ambient temperature, so perhaps they've been buried in the backyard. So far they've traveled 600 miles from jungle to desert in just under two months. Their path is consistent with the route Kony's defectors tell me ivory takes on the way to the warlord's Kafia Kingi base. By the time you read this, my tusks might have gone to Khartoum. Or possibly even shown up in illegal ivory's biggest consuming country: China.

Meanwhile, as leaders in Europe, the Middle East, and the U.S. strategize about how to stop the ever expanding network of international terrorist organizations, somewhere in Africa a park ranger stands his post, holding an AK-47 and a handful of bullets, manning the front line for all of us.

This story was originally published in the September 2015 issue of National Geographic magazine. This story launches the National Geographic Society's Special Investigations Unit, which will report on wildlife crimes. This project was made possible by a grant from The Woodtiger Fund.

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Inside the Battle Over George Floyd Square

The trial over George Floyd's death is underway in Minneapolis. What to do with his memorial site has become a controversy of its own.

"It is true that George Floyd Square is this beautiful place of racial justice and healing." "The expression of the movement at George Floyd Square has been extremely powerful because it's been rooted in community." "And then you have the violence." "It's also true that there are times where that square is violent." "Which violence are we talking about? I don't believe sending an army of officers is the best way to address the pain and the trauma." "It's creating a haven, though unintentionally, for criminal activity and behavior." "You, as yourself, as one single individual, may not have the full story, may not have the full perspective." This is the story of the place where George Floyd died in May 2020. But it's also a story of something much larger than this intersection. [chanting] After almost a year of protests, the trial of the former officer accused of killing Floyd has begun. But at the same time, a conflict is brewing here over the future of Floyd's memorial site. In a city that says it's committed to racial justice, what's happening here at George Floyd Square shows just how complex achieving that goal will be. "The intersection was the place that raised me. It was like, This is my community. It's always been 38th and Chicago. But as it became George Floyd Square, it started taking on a kind of identity in the movement and in the protest." "When I open my door, I look across the street, and George Floyd Square is directly across the street. It's greatly impacted our ability to function as a church. Depending on who's on the barriers, sometimes it's easy to get in and sometimes it's not." After Floyd's death, people gathered here to mourn and protest. And to protect them, the city closed the intersection with concrete barriers. But almost a year later, the barriers remain. Police are not welcome. And activists control who's allowed in. "This occupation has been a process of imagining a world beyond policing. They want to reopen the streets to go back to business as usual. What sense does that make? We will have more George Floyds." "Police say that shootings there have skyrocketed." "Over 20 shots fired." "Shootings and robberies." Violent crime is on the rise across the U.S. and in Minneapolis. In the neighborhood surrounding George Floyd Square, it shot up 66% last year. "To the extent the barriers that were once used to protect and keep people safe are now used to promote bad activity and violence - that's unacceptable." The people who live here have mixed feelings about what the square has become. "Shit, I love this neighborhood. Know what I'm saying? Been here my whole life, so the community's the same, but right here it's more like a tourist attraction now." "I don't want my neighborhood getting shut down. I don't want to have to walk extra blocks to get to the bus stop to go to work, to go anywhere for that matter. Like, it's a real nuisance. I'm angry at the fact that my neighborhood got taken over. I'm angry at the fact that the police did not do their job, that they sat on a guy's neck instead of just putting him in the squad car and taking off. Not only did George Floyd, you know, end up, you know, like, losing his life. But, you know, like, the community wound up paying for it as well." "I hope this area is always somewhat of a memorial. This is certainly a sacred space. So, you know, it should be respected." "I just had a meeting with six business owners saying, 'Please reopen this intersection. It's killing my business.' People want to memorialize the memory of George Floyd, but they also want to reopen this intersection." George Floyd Square sits partly in Andrea Jenkins's council district. For months she's been pushing to remove the barriers, saying progress is being made in other ways. "We have declared racism as a public health crisis, reallocated funds from the Minneapolis Police Department. Four police officers got fired, will be standing trial for murder." She's also helping to get community input on what a permanent memorial to Floyd should look like. "We have to move on. People want to keep this painful wound open? It's not progress. It's called regress." "I do not intend to protest forever. It's only intended to signal to people that there is something wrong that needs to be addressed." "You know, we've been here every day, practically, since George Floyd was murdered. One of the things I was aware of and am aware of is the hopelessness. And I think we all are a little sensitive and concerned about what is going to happen with this trial. I've never seen people so on edge like they are today." When and exactly how George Floyd Square will be reopened, the city hasn't said. For now, the outcome of this murder trial is the bigger question. "Just one minute of silence. And I'm a little bit nervous about if we're going to see justice with this trial, you know? And most of us in the Black community have seen this picture before. And nobody seems to have the answer."

The trial over George Floyd's death is underway in Minneapolis. What to do with his memorial site has become a controversy of its own. Credit Credit... Erik Ljung for The New York Times

Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1, 2021.

"Inside the Battle Over George Floyd Square" is a seven-minute film that touches on themes of race, protest, violence and community. The intersection where George Floyd died beneath the knee of a police officer has become a memorial site - and a controversy of its own.

As the trial of the former police officer charged in the death begins, The Times explores the impact on the city of Minneapolis as it braces for a verdict, focusing on a small area now considered "sacred" ground by many community members. "In a city that says it's committed to racial justice," the filmmakers say, "what's happening at George Floyd Square shows just how complex achieving that goal will be."

What does the debate over a memorial site tell us about the struggle for racial justice in one city, and for America?
Students
1. Watch the short film above. While you watch, you might take notes using our Film Club Double-Entry Journal (PDF) to help you remember specific moments.

2. After watching, think about these questions:

What questions do you still have?

What connections can you make between this film and your own life or experience? Why? Does this film remind you of anything else you've read or seen? If so, how and why?

3. An additional challenge | Respond to the essential question at the top of this post: What does the debate over a memorial site tell us about the struggle for racial justice in one city, and for America?

4. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)

5. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the "Reply" button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.

6. To learn more, read " Ten Months After George Floyd's Death, Minneapolis Residents Are at War Over Policing. " John Eligon and Tim Arango:

MINNEAPOLIS - The sacred intersection where George Floyd died beneath the knee of a police officer has seen such an increase in violence that food delivery drivers are afraid to venture there. There have been gun battles, with bloodied shooting victims dragged to ambulances because of barricades keeping the police and emergency vehicles away.

"Having no police: This is the experiment right here," said P.J. Hill, a leader of Worldwide Outreach for Christ, a church that has been on that corner in Minneapolis for almost 40 years. "This is their one-block experiment."

Residents all over town still complain of officers using excessive force, like during a recent confrontation in which a white officer appeared to wind up and punch a Black teenager. And officers accuse some community members of antagonizing them, like in a recent dispute over a homeless encampment that erupted into a melee with punches and pepper spray.

Ten months ago, Minneapolis, and the country, seemed to coalesce around the belief that policing needed an overhaul after gruesome video footage surfaced of the last moments of Mr. Floyd's life. Now, with the murder trial of the officer who knelt on Mr. Floyd's neck scheduled to begin on Monday, the struggle over what to overhaul and how to do it has left Minneapolis at war with itself over public safety and the role of the police.

You can also follow Times coverage of the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer charged in the death of George Floyd, here.
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Film Club: 'Inside the Battle Over George Floyd Square'

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After almost a year of protests, the trial of the former officer accused of killing Floyd has begun. What does the debate over a memorial site tell us about the struggle for racial justice in one city, and for America?