# data[].attributes.headline
Barack Obama and the end of his presidency 

# data[].attributes.subject
Barack Obama and the end of his presidency 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Barack Obama's Presidency: A Mini-Documentary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WASHINGTON - Donald John Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States on Friday, ushering in a new era that he vowed would shatter the established order and reverse a national decline that he called "this American carnage."

In a ceremony that capped a remarkable rise to power, Mr. Trump presented himself as the leader of a populist uprising to restore lost greatness. He outlined a dark vision of an America afflicted by "the ravages" of economic dislocation and foreign exploitation, requiring his can-do approach to turn around.

"I will fight for you with every breath in my body, and I will never, ever let you down," Mr. Trump told hundreds of thousands of rain-soaked admirers and onlookers in a forceful 16-minute Inaugural Address from the West Front of the Capitol. "America will start winning again, winning like never before. We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams."

Mr. Trump's ascension amounted to a hostile takeover of a capital facing its most significant disruption in generations. While officially a Republican, he has taken on leaders of both parties and, with no prior political career of his own, made clear that he saw himself as the ultimate outsider not beholden to the current system.

"We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining but never doing anything about it," he said. "The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action. Do not allow anyone to tell you that it cannot be done."

Mr. Trump's view of the United States was strikingly grim for an Inaugural Address - a country where mothers and children are "trapped in poverty in our inner cities," where "rusted-out factories" are "scattered like tombstones across the landscape" and where drugs and crime "have stolen too many lives."

"This American carnage," he declared, "stops right here and stops right now."

He got started right away with rolling back the policies of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, by issuing orders freezing new regulations from recent weeks and ordering agencies to "ease the burden" of the Affordable Care Act during the transition from repealing to replacing the law. More orders are planned for next week.

Wearing a dark suit and red tie and accompanied by his wife, Melania, in a powder-blue suit and matching gloves, Mr. Trump took the 35-word oath administered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. precisely at noon. Michael Richard Pence, a former governor and congressman from Indiana, was sworn in minutes before as vice president by Justice Clarence Thomas.

Mr. Trump assumed the presidency of a country still unsettled after a polarizing election and entered office with less support in polls than any other president in recent history. It was clear from the day that there would be no grace period either for or by the new president. The Senate confirmed two cabinet nominations - James N. Mattis as defense secretary and John F. Kelly as secretary of homeland security - but Democrats temporarily held up Mike Pompeo's confirmation as C.I.A. director.

Throughout the day, there were mostly peaceful protests against the new president. Sporadic violence broke out as demonstrators smashed shop windows and burned a limousine, while police officers in riot helmets responded with tear gas. More than 200 people were arrested. Liberal groups prepared for a women's march on Saturday that they said could draw hundreds of thousands.

Mr. Trump made only passing efforts to reach out to Democrats beyond thanking Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, for their handling of the transition. "They have been magnificent," he said in his speech.

He later praised his defeated opponent, Hillary Clinton, at a lobster-and-beef luncheon with congressional leaders, asking her and former President Bill Clinton to stand for applause. "I have a lot of respect for these two people," he said.

Democrats were not impressed. "I was pretty shocked by how dark it was," Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, said of Mr. Trump's Inaugural Address. "I love this country, and I don't understand how a president of the United States that loves his country could paint a picture of its failures."

He added, "It was interesting sitting up onstage with a bunch of billionaires hearing him say how bad the country was."

The National Mall was filled with supporters, many wearing "Make America Great Again" hats and chanting "Trump! Trump! Trump!" But the lingering animosity from the presidential campaign was on display, too. When Mrs. Clinton arrived, some in the crowd chanted, "Lock her up," mimicking Mr. Trump's campaign rallies. As he took the oath, a cluster of people blew whistles and screamed, "Not my president," before being escorted out.

While large, the crowds on a soggy day did not rival the energetic throngs at Mr. Obama's first inauguration eight years ago, according to aerial photographs. The Washington Metrorail system recorded fewer than half as many rides on Friday morning as in 2009, and knots of bystanders along the inaugural parade route were not as thick. In a city that gave just 4 percent of its vote to Mr. Trump, many residents left town and about 60 House Democrats boycotted the event.

Mr. Obama made his exit after the ceremony, flying by helicopter to Joint Base Andrews in the Maryland suburbs, where he thanked former aides and members of his administration before boarding the presidential jet, no longer designated Air Force One, to fly to Palm Springs, Calif., for vacation. He will return to Washington to a rental house while his daughter Sasha finishes high school, the first president to stay in the capital since Woodrow Wilson.

Hours before his departure, Mr. Obama posted on Twitter to thank followers and hint that he would not fade away. "I won't stop," he said. "I'll be right there with you as a citizen, inspired by your voices of truth and justice, good humor, and love."

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his wife, Jill, rode an Amtrak train to Delaware and the home they have there. But they, too, planned to return, at least part time, to Washington, where Mrs. Biden teaches at a community college in the Virginia suburbs.

The United States has never seen a president quite like Mr. Trump, the son and grandson of immigrants who grew up to become a real estate magnate, casino owner, beauty pageant operator and reality television star whose tumultuous love life played out in the tabloids.

Never has the oath been administered to a president who had never served either in public office or as a general in the military. At age 70, Mr. Trump became the oldest president sworn in for the first time and the first born in New York since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

He was also one of the wealthiest presidents ever to enter the White House, with far-reaching business connections that have already raised questions about where his interests end and the country's begin. He arrived in the Oval Office dogged by reports about Russian interference in the election on his behalf.

But Mr. Trump overcame skeptics when he embarked on what seemed like a quixotic bid for the presidency. An Ivy League-educated mogul who lives in a New York tower named after himself with an 80-foot-long living room, he transformed himself into the unlikely leader of a working-class movement anchored in rural areas far removed from the coasts.

His bracing candor, disregard for convention and willingness to offend whole sections of the population to make a point came across as refreshing truth-telling to many Americans disenchanted with Washington elites.

For the nation's 58th inauguration, though, the untraditional president opted to follow tradition. He and Mrs. Trump, a former model from Slovenia who became the first foreign-born first lady since John Quincy Adams's wife, Louisa, started the day with a service at St. John's Episcopal Church adjacent to Lafayette Square, then joined the Obamas, Bidens and Pences for coffee at the White House.

From there, the two presidents shared a limousine to the Capitol, where three other presidents waited: Mr. Clinton, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, all of whom opposed Mr. Trump's election. Former President George Bush remained hospitalized in Houston, recovering from pneumonia, but a spokesman said he watched the ceremony on television.

Mr. Pence, 57, was sworn in at 11:54 a.m., placing his hand on Ronald Reagan's Bible, which was held by his wife, Karen, as their three adult children, Michael, Charlotte and Audrey, watched.

For his oath, Mr. Trump placed his hand on two Bibles held by his wife, one given him by his mother in 1955 just before his ninth birthday and another used by Abraham Lincoln in 1861 and again by Mr. Obama in 2009 and 2013.

Standing nearby were his adult children from two previous marriages, Donald Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Tiffany. Also there was Barron, his 10-year-old son with the first lady. Joining them was Ivanka's husband, Jared Kushner, who will serve as an unpaid senior adviser.

As Mr. Trump approached the podium, rain began to fall. It was not a conventionally Republican speech, with nothing about tax cuts or restraining government. Instead, he laid out a protectionist agenda, saying his rule will be "buy American and hire American." He did pledge to "eradicate from the face of the Earth" Islamic terrorism. Responding to charges that he demonized Mexicans and Muslims, Mr. Trump said, "There is no room for prejudice."

Mr. Trump said the inauguration was not merely the transfer of power from one president to another. "We are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the people," he said.

"For too long," he continued, "a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished but the people did not share in the wealth." He added, "That all changes starting right here and right now."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump, Sworn In, Issues a Call: 'This American Carnage Stops'. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Donald Trump Is Sworn In as President, Capping His Swift Ascent

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WASHINGTON - Donald John Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States on Friday, ushering in a new era that he vowed would shatter the established order and reverse a national decline that he called "this American carnage."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Unregulated, unvetted travel is not a universal privilege, especially when national security is at stake," said John F. Kelly, the homeland security secretary, appearing alongside Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Ronald Reagan Federal Building in Washington on Monday.

Mr. Kelly said the order was now "prospective" and applied "only to foreign nationals outside of the United States" who do not have a valid visa. None of the men took questions.

The Trump administration quickly tried to break the legal logjam, filing papers in United States District Court in Washington late on Monday seeking to lift an order blocking the fulfillment of the initial ban.

But the president's revisions did little to halt criticism from Democrats and immigrant rights advocates, who predicted a renewed fight in the courts.

The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, described the new order as a "watered-down ban" that was still "meanspirited and un-American."

Margaret Huang, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement that the new order would "cause extreme fear and uncertainty for thousands of families by, once again, putting anti-Muslim hatred into policy."

The new measure will be phased in over the next two weeks to avoid the frenetic, same-day execution of the order in January, which prompted protests across the country and left tearful families stranded at airports abroad and in the United States.

The redrafted order, delayed by a week so it would not overshadow Mr. Trump's address to a joint session of Congress last Tuesday, represented a recognition that the rushed first attempt at the ban did not pass muster legally or politically.

Administration officials privately conceded that the initial version of the order was a political debacle that damaged Mr. Trump's nascent presidency. But they were much more sanguine about the second order, arguing that the new, multiagency review process could be used in the future to bend Mr. Trump's uncompromising messages toward Washington's bureaucratic realities.

Mr. Trump signed the first ban with great fanfare, in front of reporters, at the Pentagon. "We don't want them here," Mr. Trump said of Islamist terrorists. "We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas. We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country, and love deeply our people."

This time, the White House issued a photograph of the president signing the order alone at his desk in the Oval Office.

Justice Department lawyers said the revisions rendered moot legal cases against the original travel ban. But opponents said the removal of a section that had granted preferential treatment to victims of religious persecution was a cosmetic change that did nothing to alter the order's prejudicial purpose. Immigrant rights lawyers had argued that the provision was intended to discriminate against Muslims, pointing to recent statements by Mr. Trump.

"This is a retreat, but let's be clear - it's just another run at a Muslim ban," said Omar Jadwat, the director of the Immigrants' Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that sued to stop the first order. "They can't unring the bell."

Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York and a plaintiff in a suit seeking to block the first order, said his office was reviewing the new ban, adding, "I stand ready to litigate - again - in order to protect New York's families, institutions and economy."

Congressional Republicans, who were split over the first travel ban, had a more muted reaction. But Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who backed the first order, issued a statement saying the revised order "advances our shared goal of protecting the homeland."

Citizens of Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Libya will face a 90-day suspension of visa processing as the administration analyzes how to strengthen vetting procedures, according to a homeland security summary of the order.

The removal of Iraq from the list came after talks with security officials in Baghdad and at the urging of Mr. Mattis and State Department officials, who have been in communication with Iraqi officials alarmed that the ban will turn public sentiment in their country against the United States.

"On the basis of negotiations that have taken place between the government of Iraq and the U.S. Department of State in the last month, Iraq will increase cooperation with the U.S. government on the vetting of its citizens applying for a visa to travel to the United States," homeland security officials wrote in a fact sheet given to reporters.

The timing of the ban seemed intended to reset the White House political narrative, after a turbulent week that began with Mr. Trump's well-received address to Congress. That success was quickly overshadowed by the controversies over Mr. Sessions's failure to inform the Senate of his contacts with the Russian ambassador and Mr. Trump's unsupported accusation that President Barack Obama tapped Mr. Trump's phones during the 2016 campaign.

Critics say that Mr. Trump's vow to impose "extreme vetting" on migrants, especially those fleeing the war in Syria, disregards already stringent screening measures, and the fact that none of the recent terrorist attacks or mass shootings on American soil were perpetrated by people from the nations listed in the ban.

Last week, The Associated Press reported that it had obtained a draft homeland security assessment concluding that citizenship was an "unlikely indicator" of a threat.

Homeland security officials, speaking to reporters by telephone on Monday, pushed back against that news report, arguing that it was culled from public sources and excluded classified information that paints a more dangerous picture.

An official speaking on the call said the Justice Department had identified 300 "refugees" who were being investigated for their links to Islamist terrorist groups or for holding pro-Islamic State positions. Some of those people already have permanent resident status, the official said.

But homeland security and Justice Department officials declined to provide further details, and would not say how many of the 300 people being investigated came from the countries covered by the revised travel ban.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trump's New Travel Ban Blocks Migrants From Six Nations, Sparing Iraq

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Unregulated, unvetted travel is not a universal privilege, especially when national security is at stake," said John F. Kelly, the homeland security secretary, appearing alongside Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Ronald Reagan Federal Building in Washington on Monday.

# data[].attributes.body
Mass shootings in the USA,

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The number of mass shootings in the US in 2017 reached 307 on Sunday.

A shooter rained bullets on a church in Texas over the weekend, killing 26 people and leaving several others injured.

There have been nearly as many mass shootings in the US as days in 2017.

On Sunday, at least 26 people were killed and several others were injured when a man approached the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and started shooting.

The incident marked the 307th mass shooting in 2017, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive , which tracks shootings in the US. To put this into perspective, we are 310 days into the year, which means the US has had nearly as many mass shootings as days in 2017.

Americans are more likely to die from gun violence than many leading causes of death combined, with some 11,000 people in the US killed in firearm assaults each year.

There is no broadly accepted definition of a mass shooting. Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as a single incident in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are "shot and/or killed" at "the same general time and location."

The government also doesn't have an official definition. In 2013, a report from the Congressional Research Service , known as Congress's think tank, described mass shootings as those in which shooters "select victims somewhat indiscriminately" and kill four or more people - a higher bar than Gun Violence Archive's, as it doesn't take injuries into account.

In 2013, a federal mandate lowered that threshold to three deaths. By this definition, using data from Gun Violence Archive, the Las Vegas event was the 38th mass shooting in the US in 2017.

Data from Gun Violence Archive also shows that more than 13,000 people have died from gun-related violence so far this year and more than 26,900 others were injured.
Here's a complete list of the mass shootings - as defined by Gun Violence Archive - that have occurred in the US so far in 2017. Click the arrows at the bottom to move through the list.
You can view a report of any incident by visiting the list at gunviolencearchive.org .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
There have been 307 mass shootings in the US so far in 2017 - here's the full list

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The number of mass shootings in the US in 2017 reached 307 on Sunday. A shooter rained bullets on a church in Texas over the weekend, killing 26 people and leaving several others injured. There have been nearly as many mass shootings in the US as days in 2017.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Here’s How Many People Police Killed in 2017 – The Root

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Police officers killed 1,129 people in 2017.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A spate of suicides among unusually young people has made headlines in recent weeks.-

Earlier this month, an 11-year-old girl from South Carolina shot herself to death because she was being bullied at school.

The girl, Toni Rivers, told five of her friends that "she just couldn't do this anymore, and she was going home, and she was killing herself," her aunt, Maria Petersen, told CBS affiliate WTOC-TV.

Just a few days earlier, police reported that a 12-year-old boy jumped from an overpass above Interstate 66 in northern Virginia and landed on a car. He was critically injured and the driver was killed.

These cases are part of a larger and very disturbing trend researchers have observed in recent years: The number of children and teens attempting suicide is on the rise, and so is the number of those who actually die from it.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the third leading cause of death in young people between the ages of 10 and 24, resulting in about 4,600 lives lost in the U.S. each year.

Cases have been documented in kids as young as 5 years old.

Earlier this year, research presented at the May 2017 Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting in San Francisco found that the number of children and adolescents admitted to children's hospitals for thoughts of or more than doubled during the last decade.

Now, in a new study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers reported a significant increase in emergency department visits for self-inflicted, non-fatal injuries among children and young adults.

The research, based on government data, showed a 5.7 percent increase in such visits per year from 2008 to 2015. Female tweens and young teens led the way in this troubling trend.

"In particular, self-inflicted injury rates for young females aged 10 to 14 years increased 18.8 percent annually from 2009 to 2015," Dr. Melissa Mercado, one of the authors of the study, told CBS News.

Gregory Plemmons, M.D., an associate professor of pediatrics at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt, who authored the May 2017 study, said the new JAMA report mirrored his own research.

"Although they're still a small percentage of what we take care of, the numbers of kids and teens with suicidal thoughts and actions have dramatically increased across the board," he told CBS News.

Potential reasons behind the trend

While there is strong evidence for rising rates of suicidal thoughts and actions among young people, what researchers aren't so sure about is what is driving this trend.

However, there are some theories.

"Teens are much more likely now than they were just five years ago, or seven years ago, to say that they are anxious and depressed and thinking about suicide," Jean Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University, told CBS Evening News earlier this year.

Twenge also penned an article for The Atlantic focused on the correlation between the rising popularity of smartphones and increased rates of suicide and depression among young people.

"Theirs is a generation shaped by the smartphone and by the concomitant rise of social media. I call them iGen," she wrote. "The impact of these devices has not been fully appreciated, and goes far beyond the usual concerns about curtailed attention spans. ... Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It's not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones."

She cites cyberbullying, fear and anxiety of being left out, and sleep deprivation tied to constant smartphone use as factors affecting teens' mental health and well-being.

A large study published earlier this month supports this link. The report, published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, surveyed about half a million teens ages 13 to 18 on their attitudes, behaviors, and interests.

Among other findings, the research showed that use of electronic devices including smartphones for at least five hours a day among teens more than doubled, from 8 percent in 2009 to 19 percent in 2015. The group who spent the most time glued to their phones were 70 percent more likely to have suicidal thoughts or actions than those who reported one hour of use per day.

"I don't have teenagers but whenever I work with them, they do seem much more pressured and stressed than I remember at that age with social media and keeping up appearances, and that's on top of prepping for college and clubs and over-scheduling," Plemmons said. "It certainly seems to be a different time."

A shortage of mental health care providers and fallout from the Great Recession may also play a role, he said.

What can be done to reverse the numbers?

Regardless of the reasons behind the trend, Plemmons said there's a great need for more mental health care providers.

"We have to make sure that there's access to mental health care," he said. "Kids need to have a safety plan and have resources."

Mercado said the findings of her study "underscore the need for the implementation of evidence-based, comprehensive suicide and self-harm prevention strategies within health systems and communities targeted at young people."

For their part, parents and close family members should have open conversations with their kids and teens, especially if there's concern they are depressed or at risk for suicide.

"This is a real phenomenon. If your child or teenager expresses to you that they've been thinking about suicide, it's important to talk about it and ask further questions," Plemmons said. "Seek care when needed. Don't minimize it or avoid it. You're not going to make someone suicidal by asking about it. That's supported by research. If they're already thinking them, you need to have a plan for what to do."

If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What's behind the rise in youth suicides?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A spate of suicides among unusually young people has made headlines in recent weeks.- Earlier this month, an 11-year-old girl from South Carolina shot herself to death because she was being bullied at school.

# data[].attributes.body
Willie Mayer gets Medal of freedom from former President Barack Obama!!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WASHINGTON - Willie Mays accepted the nation's highest civilian honor at the White House on Tuesday, as President Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The president walked over to Mays and placed the award around his neck as Mays removed his Giants cap for the presentation before sitting back down with the 16 other honorees.

Mays didn't speak during the ceremonies, but the nation's first black president recounted what he had said to Mays in an earlier conversation, that it is "because of giants like Mays, (that) someone like me could even think about running for president."

Mays began his professional career with his father as part of the Negro League's Birmingham Black Barons. He made his major-league debut with the then-New York Giants on May 25, 1951 - 19 days after he turned 20 and a little more than four years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Mays, 84, won two MVP awards and was a 24-time All-Star during his storied career, all but one year of which was spent with the New York and San Francisco Giants.

Considered by many to be the greatest all-around player in baseball history, Mays had long ago been honored by the Giants, who gave what is now AT&T Park the address 24 Willie Mays Plaza and placed a bronze statue of him - surrounded by 24 palm trees - in front of it. In addition, the right-field wall inside the park is 24 feet tall - all in tribute to Mays' jersey number.

San Francisco has long celebrated May 24 as Willie Mays Day in the city.

Mays told The Chronicle when he heard of his selection that none of the multitude of baseball awards compares with the Medal of Freedom, which the White House said goes to "individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."

Known as the "Say Hey Kid," his nickname's murky provenance might stem from his arrival in the major leagues when he didn't know everyone's name. "You see a guy, you say, 'Hey, man. Say hey, man,'" Mays was quoted as saying in 2006. The nickname stuck.

Mays grew up in Fairfield, Ala., the son of two gifted athletes. His mother, Annie Satterwhite, was a high school track and basketball star, and his father, Willie Howard "Cat" Mays, played on an all-black team sponsored by the local steel mill. The elder Mays taught his son to play catch at age 5. By 14, the younger Mays was playing outfield alongside his father on the Barons.

Mays played center and his father played left field. "You play on the line, I"ll take care of everything else," Mays said he told his father.

Obama took special note of Mays' over-the-shoulder catch of Vic Wertz's blast to deep center in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, calling it "one of the most spectacular plays in sports history." The Giants were underdogs in the Series, but - perhaps inspired by the catch - they swept the Cleveland Indians in four games. Mays did not win another World Series as a player, and the Giants' franchise went without another one until 2010.

Other recipients of the award Tuesday included director Steven Spielberg, singers Barbra Streisand and James Taylor, musician Itzhak Perlman, and former Yankees catcher Yogi Berra.

"Today we celebrate some extraordinary people: innovators, artists and leaders who contribute to America's strength as a nation," Obama said.

Mays was the 1951 National League Rookie of the Year, won 12 consecutive Gold Gloves (1957-68), won his MVP awards in 1954 and '65 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1979 in his first year on the ballot.

He hit .302 in his career, and his 660 home runs are still the fifth most in baseball history, with his 3,283 hits the 12th most. Mays' godson, Barry Bonds - son of teammate Bobby Bonds - passed Mays with his 661st home run in 2004 and finished with a major-league-record 762.

Mays missed most of the 1952 season and all of 1953 after he was drafted by the Army during the Korean War. He has made his home in Atherton since 1969, and - in addition to his baseball awards - has honorary degrees from Yale, Dartmouth and San Francisco State universities. Harlem has a Willie Mays Drive, and Orlando a Willie Mays Parkway and Willie Mays Park.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicle's Washington correspondent. E-mail: clochhead@sfchronicle.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Willie Mays receives Medal of Freedom from President Obama

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Willie Mays receives Medal of Freedom from President Obama WASHINGTON - Willie Mays accepted the nation's highest civilian honor at the White House on Tuesday, as President Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

# data[].attributes.body
Trumps attempt to end DACA!!!!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Back

transcript

What 'Dreamers' Gained From DACA

About 800,000 young unauthorized immigrants are protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. We spoke with a few of them in September, when President Trump announced his intention to end the Obama-era program.

"The politicians are using us like a sport, you know, they're using us like punching bags." "Democrats and Republicans alike have to stand up for us because there are DACA beneficiaries in every state." "I was brought when I was 11" " ... when I was 7, from Brazil." "I was about 10." "I was 12 years old." "I was 7 years old." " ... about 8 years old." "We crossed the border, but we were little." "So I've been here 18 years." "I'm 29 years old." "I am 20." "I am 19 years old." "I've been here for 21 years." "I am 27 years old now." "I am 23 years old and I am originally from Mexico." "When DACA was announced, I remember exactly where I was in 2012. I was at the Museum of American History." "Before DACA I always felt like I was in between two worlds. I was born in Honduras. But if I were to go back to Honduras, it's like I'm foreign to them." "It's a tug of war. When you're undocumented, you're always just aware of the situations, of the locations, who you were talking to, how you are interacting with folks, ensuring that you don't do anything that will bring attention to you because you live a life of shadows." "You know, I have been able to accomplish a lot more than when I was undocumented. To get a social security number, loans from the bank, a better job." "Every time my parents call me after 11 p.m., it's like my heart is racing. When you are an immigrant in this country, you wake up every day with the fear that you could be taken away, right, that your family could be broken up." "I have been preparing my kids of, for, you know, These are the risk[s]. This could happen to your dad and to me." "I just can't imagine, you know, my nieces and nephews being separated from their parents or them going back to a country that they don't know because this is their home. They shouldn't live with that fear that I had to grow up with. That's not a normal life. That's not normal. And I know that like my friends that are U.S. citizens don't go through that. And nobody should go through that." "I'm not leaving my home, and I think if Trump ever wanted to talk to us, if he wanted to talk to these Dreamers he would realize that we love this country. We want to stay here, and ... " " ... if it's taken away, I'm losing my job, I'm losing the opportunity to work and school. People don't understand but it's a big thing, it's a huge thing, it's privileges that some people here take for granted." "Taking DACA away is like taking a family member away from me. That wall that Donald Trump wants to build, you know, it's putting a wall in front of me where I won't be able to move forward. You are not just taking something away from us, but you're taking something away from this country." "This land is not a white America. It's not. This is a land of immigrants." "I mean, I was already a person before DACA. A lot of people say, 'Oh, you know, what's going to happen after DACA?' I'm not going down without a fight." "You know, whatever happens next, I love this country and I belong here." "I'm fighting for my family, "I'm fighting for the friends of mine that can't even stand up because they're scared." "We just want to stay here and contribute to this country, to the economy ... We are good people. We're not criminals."

About 800,000 young unauthorized immigrants are protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. We spoke with a few of them in September, when President Trump announced his intention to end the Obama-era program.

WASHINGTON - [Read more on the Supreme Court's decision on President Trump and DACA.]

President Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to the Obama-era program that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation, calling it an "amnesty-first approach" and urging Congress to pass a replacement before he begins phasing out its protections in six months.

As early as March, officials said, some of the 800,000 young adults brought to the United States illegally as children who qualify for the program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, will become eligible for deportation. The five-year-old policy allows them to remain without fear of immediate removal from the country and gives them the right to work legally.

Mr. Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who announced the change at the Justice Department, both used the aggrieved language of anti-immigrant activists, arguing that those in the country illegally are lawbreakers who hurt native-born Americans by usurping their jobs and pushing down wages.

Mr. Trump said in a statement that he was driven by a concern for "the millions of Americans victimized by this unfair system." Mr. Sessions said the program had "denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs."

Protests broke out in front of the White House and the Justice Department and in cities across the country soon after Mr. Sessions's announcement. Democrats and some Republicans, business executives, college presidents and immigration activists condemned the move as a coldhearted and shortsighted effort that was unfair to the young immigrants and could harm the economy.

"This is a sad day for our country," Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, wrote on his personal page. "It is particularly cruel to offer young people the American dream, encourage them to come out of the shadows and trust our government, and then punish them for it."

Video

President Trump is winding down DACA. But Trump and his administration have at times suggested that this wouldn't happen. Credit Credit... Tom Brenner/The New York Times

Former President Barack Obama, who had warned that any threat to the program would prompt him to speak out, called his successor's decision "wrong," "self-defeating" and "cruel."

"Whatever concerns or complaints Americans may have about immigration in general, we shouldn't threaten the future of this group of young people who are here through no fault of their own, who pose no threat, who are not taking away anything from the rest of us," Mr. Obama wrote on Facebook.

Both he and Mr. Trump said the onus was now on lawmakers to protect the young immigrants as part of a broader overhaul of the immigration system that would also toughen enforcement.

But despite broad and longstanding bipartisan support for measures to legalize unauthorized immigrants brought to the United States as children, the odds of a sweeping immigration deal in a deeply divided Congress appeared long. Legislation to protect the "dreamers" has also repeatedly died in Congress.

Just hours after the angry reaction to Mr. Trump's decision, the president appeared to have second thoughts. In a late-evening tweet, Mr. Trump specifically called on Congress to "legalize DACA," something his administration's officials had declined to do earlier in the day.

Mr. Trump also warned lawmakers that if they do not legislate a program similar to the one Mr. Obama created through executive authority, he will "revisit this issue!" - a statement sure to inject more uncertainty into the ultimate fate of the young, undocumented immigrants who have been benefiting from the program since 2012.

Image

Protesters marched from the White House toward Trump International Hotel on Tuesday after the announcement that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was ending. Credit... Alex Wroblewski for The New York Times

Conservatives praised Mr. Trump's move, though some expressed frustration that he had taken so long to rescind the program and that the gradual phaseout could mean that some immigrants retained protection from deportation until October 2019.

The White House portrayed the decision as a matter of legal necessity, given that nine Republican state attorneys general had threatened to sue to halt the program immediately if Mr. Trump did not act.

Months of internal White House debate preceded the move, as did the president's public display of his own conflicted feelings. He once referred to DACA recipients as "incredible kids."

The president's wavering was reflected in a day of conflicting messages from him and his team. Hours after his statement was released, Mr. Trump told reporters that he had "great love" for the beneficiaries of the program he had just ended.

"I have a love for these people, and hopefully now Congress will be able to help them and do it properly," he said. But he notably did not endorse bipartisan legislation to codify the program's protections, leaving it unclear whether he would back such a solution.

Mr. Trump's aides were negotiating late into Monday evening with one another about precisely how the plan to wind down the program would be executed. Until Tuesday morning, some aides believed the president had settled on a plan that would be more generous, giving more of the program's recipients the option to renew their protections.

But even taking into account Mr. Trump's contradictory language, the rollout of his decision was smoother than his early moves to crack down on immigration, particularly the botched execution in January of his ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

In addition to the public statement from Mr. Sessions and a White House question-and-answer session, the president was ready on Tuesday with the lengthy written statement, and officials at the Justice and Homeland Security Departments provided detailed briefings and distributed information to reporters in advance.

Mr. Trump sought to portray his move as a compassionate effort to head off the expected legal challenge that White House officials said would have forced an immediate and highly disruptive end to the program. But he also denounced the policy, saying it helped spark a "massive surge" of immigrants from Central America, some of whom went on to become members of violent gangs like MS-13. Some immigration critics contend that programs like DACA, started under Mr. Obama, encouraged Central Americans to enter the United States, hoping to stay permanently. Tens of thousands of migrants surged across America's southern border in the summer of 2014, many of them children fleeing dangerous gangs.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, indicated that Mr. Trump would support legislation to "fix" the DACA program, as long as Congress passed it as part of a broader immigration overhaul to strengthen the border, protect American jobs and enhance enforcement.

"The president wants to see responsible immigration reform, and he wants that to be part of it," Ms. Sanders said, referring to a permanent solution for the young immigrants. "Something needs to be done. It's Congress's job to do that. And we want to be part of that process."

Later on Tuesday, Marc Short, Mr. Trump's top legislative official, told reporters on Capitol Hill that the White House would release principles for such a plan in the coming days, input that at least one key member of Congress indicated would be crucial.

Three DACA recipients - Sofia Ruales, left; her sister Erica Ruales; and their cousin Marlon Ruales - listened on Tuesday near Trump Tower in Manhattan to Attorney General Jeff Sessions's announcement. Credit... Todd Heisler/The New York Times

"It is important that the White House clearly outline what kind of legislation the president is willing to sign," Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said in a statement. "We have no time to waste on ideas that do not have the votes to pass or that the president won't sign."

The announcement was an effort by Mr. Trump to honor the law-and-order message of his campaign, which included a repeated pledge to end Mr. Obama's immigration policy, while seeking to avoid the emotionally charged and politically perilous consequences of targeting a sympathetic group of immigrants.

Mr. Trump's decision came less than two weeks after he pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who drew intense criticism for his aggressive pursuit of unauthorized immigrants, which earned him a criminal contempt conviction.

The blame-averse president told a confidante over the past few days that he realized that he had gotten himself into a politically untenable position. As late as one hour before the decision was to be announced, administration officials privately expressed concern that Mr. Trump might not fully grasp the details of the steps he was about to take, and when he discovered their full impact, would change his mind, according to a person familiar with their thinking who was not authorized to comment on it and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Video

The "wind down" of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program will affect an estimated 800,000 individuals. Credit Credit... Tom Brenner/The New York Times

But ultimately, the president followed through on his campaign pledge at the urging of Mr. Sessions and other hard-line members inside his White House, including Stephen Miller, his top domestic policy adviser.

The announcement started the clock on revoking legal status from those protected under the program.

Officials said DACA recipients whose legal status expires on or before March 5 would be able to renew their two-year period of legal status as long as they apply by Oct. 5. But the announcement means that if Congress fails to act, immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children could face deportation as early as March 6 to countries where many left at such young ages that they have no memory of them.

Immigration officials said they did not intend to actively target the young immigrants as priorities for deportation, though without the program's protection, they would be considered subject to removal from the United States and would no longer be able to work legally.

Officials said some of the young immigrants could be prevented from returning to the United States if they traveled abroad.

Immigration advocates took little comfort from the administration's assurances, describing the president's decision as deeply disturbing and vowing to shift their demands for protections to Capitol Hill.

Marielena Hincapié, the executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, called Mr. Trump's decision "nothing short of hypocrisy, cruelty and cowardice." Maria Praeli, a recipient of protection under the program, criticized Mr. Sessions and Mr. Trump for talking "about us as if we don't matter and as if this isn't our home."

The Mexican foreign ministry issued a statement saying the "Mexican government deeply regrets" Mr. Trump's decision.

As recently as July, Mr. Trump expressed skepticism about the prospect of a broad legislative deal.

"What I'd like to do is a comprehensive immigration plan," he told reporters. "But our country and political forces are not ready yet."

As for DACA, he said: "There are two sides of a story. It's always tough."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trump Moves to End DACA and Calls on Congress to Act (Published 2017)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WASHINGTON - [Read more on the Supreme Court's decision on President Trump and DACA .] President Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to the Obama-era program that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation, calling it an "amnesty-first approach" and urging Congress to pass a replacement before he begins phasing out its protections in six months.

# data[].attributes.body
Opioid Epidemic rises in 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Opioid addiction is America's 50-state epidemic. It courses along Interstate highways in the form of cheap smuggled heroin, and flows out of "pill mill" clinics where pain medicine is handed out like candy. It has ripped through New England towns, where people overdose in the aisles of dollar stores, and it has ravaged coal country, where addicts speed-dial the sole doctor in town licensed to prescribe a medication.

Public health officials have called the current opioid epidemic the worst drug crisis in American history, killing more than 33,000 people in 2015. Overdose deaths were nearly equal to the number of deaths from car crashes. In 2015, for the first time, deaths from heroin alone surpassed gun homicides.

And there's no sign it's letting up, a team of New York Times reporters found as they examined the epidemic on the ground in states across the country. From New England to "safe injection" areas in the Pacific Northwest, communities are searching for a way out of a problem that can feel inescapable.

Marblehead, Mass.
In Suburbia, 'Tired of Everything'

Katie Harvey walked out of the house where she lived with friends, shoved her duffel bag into her mother's car and burst into tears.

"I need to go to detox," she told her mother, Maureen Cavanagh. "I'm just tired of everything."

Ms. Harvey, 24, had been shooting heroin for three years. She had been in and out of detox - eight times altogether. But it had always been someone else's idea.

This time, Ms. Harvey made the arrangements herself. She had come to loathe her life. "I haven't even been doing enough to get really high," she said. "I'm just maintaining myself so I don't get sick."

Before she left for detox, Ms. Harvey curled up on the couch in her mother's living room in this well-to-do suburb north of Boston and reflected on her life: her low self-esteem despite model-worthy good looks; her many lies to her family; how she had pawned her mother's jewelry and had sex with strange men for money to pay for drugs.

As she spoke, tears spilled from her eyes. She wiped them with the cuff of her sweater, which covered track marks and a tattoo that said "freedom" - her goal, to be unshackled from the prison of addiction.

Ms. Harvey had been a popular honors student. But she developed anorexia. Alcohol was next. By 21, she was hooked on heroin.

In 2015, she was arrested on charges of prostitution. In an extraordinary act of contrition, she wrote a public apology online to her friends and family.

Still, she plunged in deeper. She estimated that at her worst, she was shooting up a staggering number of times a day, perhaps as many as 15 - heroin, cocaine, fentanyl. She overdosed five times. In Massachusetts, almost five residents die every day from overdoses.

"I don't know how I'm alive, honestly," Ms. Harvey said.

That night in October, she went into detox. Four days later, she checked out. She went back to her friends and drugs, developing an abscess on her arm, probably from dirty needles.

Two weeks later, she was back in detox. This time, she stayed, then entered a 30-day treatment program.

The return trips to detox have been an emotional roller coaster for her mother. To cope, Ms. Cavanagh founded a group, Magnolia New Beginnings, to help drug users and their families.

Among her words of advice: Tell your children you love them, because "it might be the last thing you say to them." KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Marshalltown, Iowa
Help May Be Thin on the Ground

Andrea Steen is one of the fortunate ones. For people in this rural community of 28,000, getting medication to help overcome opioid addiction used to require long drives to treatment centers.

That changed about a year ago when two doctors here were licensed to prescribe Suboxone, a drug that eases withdrawal symptoms and helps keep opioid cravings at bay. Now Ms. Steen is one of their patients, coming once a month to check in and renew her prescription.

This epidemic is different from those of the past in significant ways. One is that it has spawned a growing demand for medications that can help modify addiction's impact.

One of them is naloxone, known as Narcan, a powerful antidote that has jolted hundreds of overdosed users back to life. Another is buprenorphine, typically sold as Suboxone.

By keeping users from experiencing cravings and withdrawal, Suboxone can make it easier for addicts to stay off heroin and other opioids. The number of doctors certified to prescribe buprenorphine has more than doubled since 2011, to about 36,000 from about 16,000, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Yet the drug remains out of reach for many rural Americans.

Ms. Steen, 46, is among 20 patients who get Suboxone from the two doctors authorized to prescribe it here. Until last summer, she said, she abused Vicodin and morphine relentlessly. She would steal them from her disabled husband, who would try in vain to hide them. But sometimes she couldn't root out the pills fast enough, and she would experience what every addict dreads most: withdrawal.

She heard about Suboxone from a friend in Tennessee whom she met through Facebook.

"She could tell when I was high," Ms. Steen said. "Her husband was on Suboxone. She was trying to help me."

Ms. Steen started on Suboxone in July, initially making weekly visits to Dr. Nicole Gastala and Dr. Timothy Swinton, the family practitioners here who prescribe the drug. Then it was every other week.

Unlike methadone, which also helps treat opioid addiction but must be taken under supervision at special clinics, Suboxone can be taken at home. Some doctors fail to follow Suboxone patients closely, or to test their urine to make sure they are not abusing or selling the medication or using other drugs. But the protocol here is strict.

Besides her doctor visits, Ms. Steen must attend group therapy and have regular urine tests.

She has mostly stopped craving opioids, for now. ABBY GOODNOUGH

Los Angeles
Tough-Love Rehab

They enter through an unmarked turquoise storefront, nestled between fashion boutiques on Melrose Avenue. They gather in a circle, ready for the tough-love approach they have come to expect from Howard C. Samuels, a clinical psychologist who runs the Hills, a drug rehabilitation center whose location is central to its marketing.

A spot in the room is hard to come by, as are most drug rehabilitation services, especially for the poor and anyone without the proper insurance. The Hills, which can cost around $50,000, serves a more privileged population, yet its mission is no less daunting.

In 2014, heroin became the most common reported drug of choice among those seeking treatment in Los Angeles County, surpassing marijuana and methamphetamine.

Dr. Samuels began with what he called a reality check. "How many of you have been to at least five treatment centers?" he asked. Nearly every one of the 19 clients in the room raised a hand.

"How about 10?" Still half of the clients raised their hands.

One of them, Jordan, who agreed to tell his story only if his last name was not disclosed, knows he is one of the lucky ones. This is only his third time in rehab, a relative rookie at 33 years old. This was his 118th day sober.

He had smoked pot, taken ecstasy and occasionally snorted cocaine. But heroin seemed off-limits to him, a college-educated son of two therapists, until a friend offered him some to smoke. Four years later, he blew through a $20,000 inheritance in a month to get what he called the best heroin in the city.

After his first days of detox were over at the Hills, Jordan began what would be months of therapy. He confronted what Dr. Samuels calls "character defects," and rattles his off easily: lust, anger, lack of discipline.

On this day, he knows he will draw the wrath of Dr. Samuels: Subverting the rules, he recently went out for his seventh tattoo. "My addiction has been replaced with addiction to other things: going to the gym, smoking, girls, getting tattoos."

"Don't you owe me an apology?" Dr. Samuels said to him, almost shouting.

Jordan answered quietly: "Yeah, I guess I owe you and some people an apology."

"I'm glad you're apologizing to me. That's good, but what's bad is, it came so naturally," Dr. Samuels said.

"All of us have some real impulse control problems," he continued. "That's why we're drug addicts."
JENNIFER MEDINA

Seattle
'For the Grace of God, There Go I'

The girl looked to be barely out of her teens, and was teetering on the brink of consciousness.

"She couldn't even form a sentence," said Dan Manus, a soft-spoken 61-year-old in a Seattle Seahawks cap. His jaw tightened as he recalled the night in October when he and his partner on the King County Emergency Service Patrol found the girl and, he thinks, saved her life.

A former addict, he knows the terrain too well. He's been clean for 22 years now, and working for the county for the last nine.

"I can relate to everybody I work with down there, because for the grace of God, there go I," Mr. Manus said, standing in the patrol parking lot between runs. "So, yeah, I feel like this kind of was my calling."

The Emergency Service Patrol was established in the 1980s by a private charity (later taken over by King County) to rescue street alcoholics by bringing them to a safe "sobering center" to sleep it off.

In October, though, in an acknowledgment of heroin's new ravages - treatment admissions for heroin in King County surpassed alcohol for the first time in 2015 - Mr. Manus and other patrol crew members were trained and equipped with naloxone.

"Harm reduction" is an approach that was to some degree pioneered here. One of the nation's first clean-needle exchanges started in nearby Tacoma in 1988.

King County is now considering opening what could be the country's first safe-injection site. There, addicts could use drugs under supervision by a health worker who may, crucially, also open the door to recovery programs, all under one roof.

For Mr. Manus, the crisis is personal. In 1992, he was saved from death by someone who found him in mid-overdose and called paramedics.

Seattle was a different, harder-edged city back then. Grunge music, and the heroin that swirled like a slipstream through the lives and song lyrics of some of its stars, was spilling out of the clubs.

The mix of drugs was changing, too. Heroin's impact in King County surged in the late 1990s in the number of times it was identified in connection with a drug death, before beginning a near decade-long slide - a period that coincided with an increase in the number of times prescription opioids were found in victims' bodies, which peaked in 2009. In that same year, heroin's role began rising again to hit its highest-ever, worst numbers in 2014 with a drop since then, according to county figures.

More people lately seem to be on complex combinations of drugs, Mr. Manus said - like the girl who, at his direction, was treated by paramedics.

"It just seems today that there's so much more out there, so many more people," Mr. Manus said quietly. "It feels nonstop." KIRK JOHNSON

Nogales, Ariz.
Outwitting the Mules

A tipster warned: Look out for a silver Nissan Sentra approaching the busy Dennis DeConcini Port of Entry in Nogales, Ariz., a crucial gateway for cheap heroin made in Mexico.

Early one morning, the Nissan rolled into passport control. A Customs and Border Protection officer caught the telltale signs of a driver who had something to hide: the darting eyes, the tight grip on the steering wheel.

The driver carried a border-crossing card, an entry permission given only to Mexican citizens. He also carried his wife and two small children and a load of heavy drugs: four pounds of methamphetamine in the passenger's backrest, and seven and a half pounds of heroin between the engine and the dashboard.

Last year, Customs and Border Protection agents seized more than 930 pounds of heroin in Arizona, which is almost one-third of all heroin seized along the entire southern border. Agents acknowledge that they catch only a small fraction of what goes through.

Much of the heroin that enters this country comes hidden in cars, concealed in suitcases, squeezed inside hollowed fire extinguishers, or strapped to the thighs, crotches and chests of Mexicans and Americans who cross between the two countries.

To the special agents assigned to Homeland Security Investigations, a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, mules are the first link of a knotted chain that may or may not lead to the agents' ultimate prize: a top drug trafficker.

"It's about preventing the narcotics from entering the community," said Jesus Lozania, the agent in charge in Nogales. "It's taking down the organization from the bottom all the way to the top: the mules, the people who coordinate the logistics, the persons who handle the money after the narcotics are sold in the United States. That cash has to make its way back to Mexico."

It is about building conspiracy cases bit by bit.

That morning at the border, three special agents noticed the black letters stamped on the bricks of heroin: LEY. "That's probably from the Chino Leys, probably Sinaloa," said one of the agents, who declined to provide his name because he works undercover.

The Chino Leys, he said, are one of the drug distribution organizations in the Sinaloa cartel, which controls the routes that slice through Arizona, aimed for the Northeast. Cleveland, New York and New Jersey are main destinations for Sinaloa's heroin these days.

The driver said he had borrowed his cousin's car to come to Nogales to buy sweaters. The disbelieving agent pressed on. The driver crossed his arms.

"The guy's not talking," the agent said. FERNANDA SANTOS

Huntington, Utah
Staying Clean in the High Desert

As she drives to work each morning, past horse ranches and nodding oil pumps, Marsha World stops to give her son, Kolton, a pale yellow pill to help keep him off heroin for another day.

There are few options for drug treatment in the high desert of central Utah, a remote expanse of struggling coal mines, white-steepled Mormon towns and some of the country's highest opiate death rates.

The lone doctor licensed to prescribe one addiction-treating drug has a waiting list. The main detox center is the county jail. So mothers like Ms. World occupy the lonely front lines of a heroin crisis that has reached deep into the remotest corners of rural America.

The sun was just skimming over the sagebrush hills when Ms. World climbed out of her car and palmed that day's naltrexone pill for her 30-year-old son. Unlike other medications Mr. World has taken over 11 years of addiction and rehab, jail and relapse, this one seemed to help.

Mr. World was in a treatment program ordered by the local drug court, and Ms. World had promised the judge she would keep the pills at her house and bring one to him. Every day.

The rate of prescription overdose deaths among the 32,000 people sprinkled across two neighboring counties in this corner of Utah is nearly four times the state average. Addiction has rippled through ranks of miners who relied on pain pills after years of digging coal and working in the power plants.

Karen Dolan, who runs the Four Corners Behavioral Health center in the nearby town of Price, the only substance-abuse facility for miles, said three of her staff members had lost family members to addiction. At the power plant where her husband works, some of his co-workers' family members have died of overdoses. Heroin accounts for 31 percent of the clinic's admissions, up from 3 percent in 2010.

"People call every day and say, 'Do you have an opening?'" Ms. Dolan said. "We don't have any money to pay for medication-assisted treatment, and we don't have prescribers to provide treatment."

After years struggling with heroin addiction in Salt Lake City, Mr. World moved back in 2013, to the community where he had grown up in a loving family that went to Mormon services on weekends. (He is no longer a part of the church.)

But it was no sanctuary. When Mr. World found a stray Chihuahua on the road a few months ago, it turned out the dog's young owner was in jail because of an opiate addiction. And getting drugs here proved just as easy as in the city: One Facebook message to an acquaintance did it.

But it has been more than 300 days since he last used. His days now are work, therapy, random drug tests at the sheriff's office and morning visits from Mom.

"Love you," she said after he took his pill. She hugged her son and his boyfriend goodbye, and drove to her job at the dry cleaner. JACK HEALY

Milwaukee
In the End, Uncomprehending

Sometimes they call themselves "the last responders."

They work in the county medical examiner's office, in a low-slung brick building downtown in the shadow of an old Pabst factory. Here is where they take over after a drug addiction has been more powerful than pleas from family, 12-step programs or even Narcan.

"We're the end of the line," said Sara Schreiber, the forensic technical director, walking through the autopsy rooms to talk about the office's part in the opioid addiction epidemic - a crisis that has hit especially hard here.

Last year, 299 people in Milwaukee County died of drug-related overdoses. One of them was the medical examiner's own son.

Adam Peterson died in September at the age of 29, found unresponsive in a friend's apartment. "At this time I am not speaking publicly about Adam's death, and I appreciate your forbearance as my wife and I work through this issue," his father, Brian L. Peterson, the medical examiner, wrote in an email.

Dr. Peterson has continued his work despite his grief. He oversees a staff of nearly 30 people - administrators, toxicologists and laboratory employees - who have perhaps never been more overwhelmed. They are confronting a surge of drug-related deaths in Milwaukee County, the most populous county in Wisconsin, with nearly one million people in the city and suburbs.

They have witnessed an alarming rise in drug-related deaths for years now: 251 deaths in 2014, 255 in 2015, and they surpassed those figures in 2016. Dr. Peterson's son was among those who died last summer in a surge of overdoses that in seven weeks took more than 70 lives.

Ms. Schreiber has witnessed much of the epidemic. The victims have been mostly middle-aged; more male than female; more white than black.

As she walked through the laboratory, she pointed out the epidemic's effects. Now, the machines that analyze blood to help determine the ever-more-toxic blends of drugs are running far more often. They're juggling more cases and analyzing more specimens than before.

Ms. Schreiber and her colleagues struggle with questions that they cannot answer. What can they do to stem the epidemic? How can they influence people while they are still alive?

It's hard to know where to begin, she said. "You can't outrun it."
JULIE BOSMAN

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Inside a Killer Drug Epidemic: A Look at America's Opioid Crisis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Opioid addiction is America's 50-state epidemic. It courses along Interstate highways in the form of cheap smuggled heroin, and flows out of "pill mill" clinics where pain medicine is handed out like candy.

# data[].attributes.body
Taking the knee During National Anthem to protest against Police brutality!!!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After a wave of players joined in on American football player Colin Kaepernick's protest movement against police brutality last year - morphing the protest into something of direct resistance to Donald Trump after the president weighed in on the issue - the NFL has now announced that teams will be fined if players take a knee during the national anthem.

The contentious move to take a knee during the national anthem before a game, or stand with arms locked in silent protest, follows in a long tradition of sports stars standing up for what they believe to be right - but some charge that it is unpatriotic and that politics should be kept out of sports.

Here's what you need to know.
When did this all start?
Kaepernick's protest first occurred 21 months ago, but was not immediately noticed. At that point, he simply sat on the benches during the US national anthem during a preseason game, just next to some giant Gatorade jugs.

But, he later transitioned to taking a knee in protest - saying he was doing so to show more respect for military veterans - which turned out to be a much more iconic pose. Several other players joined his protest, even though they received a lot of criticism from football fans who said that it was disrespectful to the United States. Still, the movement did not gain huge traction that year.

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people, and people of colour," Kaepernick said in a press conference after first sitting out during the anthem. "To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street, and people getting paid leave, and getting away with murder."

American sportspeople kneel in protest

What was the context surrounding those first protests?
Police brutality has become an incredibly polarising and contentious issue in American life. This has come as a result of repeated videos showing police shooting and killing unarmed black men, which have been posted online and gone viral - illustrating the brutality that black people in America must contend with when dealing with some police officers, who often do not serve any prison time for pulling the trigger.
Why is it gaining steam now?
Mr Trump became a catalyst for the protest in September when he said during a campaign rally in Alabama that he wished that NFL players would be fired for kneeling during the national anthem.

"Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a b**** off the field right now, out, he's fired. He's fired,'" Mr Trump said. "You know, some owner is going to do that. He's going to say, 'That guy that disrespects our flag, he's fired.' And that owner, they don't know it [but] they'll be the most popular person in this country."
Who is protesting?
Some football teams chose not to come out onto the field at all after Mr Trump's comments, while other teams allowed their players to protest at their own discretion. In addition to most, if not all, of the NFL teams seeing some players protesting the weekend after Mr Trump's September remarks, baseball professionals and basketball professionals also joined in.

Notably, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady called Mr Trump's comments "divisive", and locked arms with his teammates during his game following the president's remarks. Brady has remained mostly silent about Mr Trump, whom he has called a friend in the past.
Why exactly is this such a big deal for people?
Mr Trump charges that kneeling during the national anthem is disrespectful to American servicemen and women, as do many of his supporters. The White House has repeatedly attempted to rebrand the protest as a protest of the American flag instead of against police brutality and racism in the US.

After Kaepernick first started the protest, he was criticised for introducing politics into sports. Many said that football was somehow sacrosanct, and that it should be a place where people can rise above politics.
But is it abnormal for sports stars to make their political opinions known during events?
No, not really. There's a pretty rich history of American sports stars wading into the political sphere.

For instance, John Carlos and Tommie Smith made headlines across the world when they raised the black power salute on the podium after winning in the 1968 Olympics. That protest brought them death threats, and they were expelled from the games.

Muhammad Ali is perhaps one of the best known American athletes to take a major political stand. While not a direct stand against racism, Ali refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War - a refusal that involved jail time. He did so on the basis of his faith, he said, but did note the cruel irony of asking black men to fight in Vietnam for a country that has treated them as subhuman.

More recently, NBA players like LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and others, helped the Black Lives Matter movement pick up steam by wearing supportive shirts following the death of Eric Garner, who was choked to death in New York.
What is the new NFL rule?
NFL owners unanimously approved the new national anthem policy this week, requiring players to stand if they are on the field during the performance of the song. Players have the option to remain in the locker room during the anthem if they prefer.

If a player or other employee of a team kneels or sits during the anthem, the teams themselves are fined. The teams then have the option to fine the individual players or personnel for the infraction.

The vote was unanimous, but the owner of the San Francisco 49ers - the team Kaepernick played for when he started the protest - abstained from the vote.

The rule will be added to the NFLs game operations manual, and therefore will no be subject to collective bargaining. The NFL Players Association has said it will review the policy and "challenge any aspect" of the rule that is violates the collective bargaining agreement between players and their employers.
What has happened to Kaepernick?
Kaepernick is not currently on any NFL team, even though many of his supporters argue that he is good enough to be picked up by a team. He said himself last year that he was ready to play if any team was willing to hire him.

But, while Kaepernick is out of an NFL job, he has remained busy with charity work. That includes a $1m pledge he made to charitable organisations, which has included support for a variety of groups. Kaepernick has largely refused to comment on the most recent NFL protests, and has refrained from responding to Mr Trump's criticism of the protest movement he started as "unpatriotic".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
All you need to know about why NFL players are taking a knee and where it came from

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After a wave of players joined in on American football player Colin Kaepernick's protest movement against police brutality last year - morphing the protest into something of direct resistance to Donald Trump after the president weighed in on the issue - the NFL has now announced that teams will be fined if players take a knee during the national anthem.

# data[].attributes.body
Women's March

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Protesters on 42nd Street in front of Grand Central Terminal during the Women's March in New York. Credit... Nicole Craine for The New York Times

* Hundreds of thousands of women gathered in Washington on Saturday in a kind of counterinauguration after President Trump took office on Friday. A range of speakers and performers cutting across generational lines rallied near the Capitol before marchers made their way toward the White House.

* They were joined by crowds in cities across the country: In Chicago, the size of a rally so quickly outgrew early estimates that the march that was to follow was canceled for safety. In Manhattan, Fifth Avenue became a river of pink hats, while in downtown Los Angeles, even before the gathering crowd stretched itself out to march, it was more than a quarter mile deep on several streets.

* Begun as a Facebook post just after the election, the march is the start of what organizers hope could be a sustained campaign of protest in a polarized America, unifying demonstrators around issues like reproductive rights, immigration and civil rights. The movement has also encountered divisions.

Image

(Or watch video of the whole event.)

* The singer and actress Janelle Monae highlighted the issue of police violence, leading the crowd in a chant of "Sandra Bland! Say her name!", a reference to the high-profile case where a black woman died in police custody in Texas after being arrested in 2015.

She then brought the microphone to each of the women in "Mothers of the Movement" who had joined her onstage. One by one, they joined in the chant, each inserting the name of her child who had died at the hands of the police.

* The actress Ashley Judd delivered an uninhibited speech that ended with her referencing how Mr. Trump bragged, in a 2005 recording, that he could use his celebrity status to force himself on women, even groping their private parts.

They "ain't for grabbing," she said. "They are for birthing new generations of filthy, vulgar, nasty, proud, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, you name it, for new generations of nasty women."

* Gloria Steinem, the feminist icon of the 1960s and 1970s, told the women in the group to get to know one another more personally.

"Make sure you introduce yourselves to each other and decide what we're going to do tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow," she said. "We're never turning back!"

* "It's been a heart-rending time to be both a woman and an immigrant in this country," said the actress and activist America Ferrera."But the president is not America. His cabinet is not America. Congress is not America. We are America! And we are here to stay."

* After getting to the crowd to repeat a number to call Congress, the filmmaker Michael Moore urged people to run for office:

"This is not the time for shy people! Shy people, you have two hours to get over it."

* The actress Scarlett Johansson told a story about how she had visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in New York City after starting her acting career, and how a doctor there had treated her with compassion, "no judgment, no questions asked."

"I feel that in the face of this current political climate, it is vital that we all make it our mission to get really, really personal," she said.

"President Trump, I did not vote for you," she continued. "I want to be able to support you. But first I ask that you support me. Support my sister. Support my mother. Support my best friend and all of our girlfriends."

Otherwise, Ms. Johansson said, her own daughter, "may potentially not have the right to make choices for her body and her future that your daughter Ivanka has been privileged to have."
_____

Many participants believed that Mr. Trump expressed misogynistic views during the presidential campaign, with remarks about Megyn Kelly, Carly Fiorina and Hillary Clinton. After the 2005 recording surfaced, several women came forward to accuse Mr. Trump of inappropriate sexual conduct. He dismissed the recording as "locker room banter" and assailed his accusers.

In a sly allusion to the crude remarks Mr. Trump made in the recording, many marchers, men and women alike, wore pink "pussyhats," complete with cat ears. The hats are described on pussyhatproject.com as a way to "make a unique collective visual statement which will help activists be better heard."
_____
Just after 10 a.m., Mr. Trump and his family headed in the opposite direction of the march in Washington for the National Prayer Service, an inaugural tradition, at the National Cathedral. When he spoke at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., in the midafternoon, he told his audience that they were his "No. 1 stop" on his first full day in office, because they were "really special amazing people."

He also ruminated about how big the attendance had been at his inaugural speech, but he did not mention the large crowds of the women's march, where demonstrators were challenging his administration on a number of policies, or even that the march was taking place as he was speaking.
_____
Mrs. Clinton was not expected to attend the march in Washington, The Times reported on Friday, but her Twitter account sent a midmorning note anyway.

_____
In a speech in Boston, Ms. Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, said fundamental freedoms, like abortion rights and gay marriage, could be at stake under Mr. Trump's Supreme Court.

"We can whimper, we can whine or we can fight back," she said, as demonstrators in pink hats waved American flags. "Me, I'm here to fight back."

"We believe in science," Ms. Warren said, adding, "we know that climate change is real." A police officer patrolling the rally pumped his fists in agreement.

"We also believe that immigration makes this country a stronger country," Ms. Warren said. "We will not build a stupid wall and we will not tear millions of families apart."

"You know, I could do this all day," she added, to laughs and cheers. "But we gotta march."
Jess Bidgood _____

Notable Signs: "Bend toward justice," evokeing the work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"I'm ready to march again," said Mr. Lewis, a Democratic representative of Georgia, who chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. "I've come here to say to you: Don't let anybody, anybody, turn you around."

Citing the demonstrations across the country, Mr. Lewis urged marchers, who flowed onto the street running near the Center for Civil and Human Rights, to "use this unity to organize" future political efforts.

"The next election, we must get out and vote like we never, ever voted before," said Mr. Lewis, who was embroiled in a public clash with Mr. Trump recently.
Alan Blinder _____
The crowds appeared to be huge in most places, with marchers in Washington, New York City and Chicago seeming to stretch to the horizons. Police departments, at times, decline to provide crowd estimates, and crowds are notoriously hard to estimate, even with a good satellite image. But some official and unofficial estimates have given a sense of the turnout.

Attendance in New York City was more than 400,000, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio's office. The St. Paul police issued an official crowd count of 50,000 to 60,000 people. Attendance in Boston was 175,000, according to Nicole Caravella, a spokeswoman for Mayor Martin J. Walsh. The Atlanta Police Department estimated about 60,000 people attended a rally there. The Department of Public Safety in Phoenix estimated that some 20,000 marched, while in Key West, Fla., a town of 25,000, police said more than 2,000 people marched.

Organizers in Chicago estimated the crowd there at 250,000, the Chicago Tribune said. The Office of Emergency Management and Communications there said late on Saturday morning that Grant Park, the sprawling area where the rally-goers had gathered, had been filled to capacity. Though the official march was canceled, many still chose to walk through downtown holding protest signs.

Although the mayor's office in Washington and organizers declined to provide an estimate of the size of the flagship march, The Associated Press reported that the District of Columbia's homeland security director, Christopher Geldart, said it was safe to say the crowd at the march there was more than the 500,000 that organizers told city officials to expect.

"The crowd was so heavy, we didn't know which way to go," said Sabitha Pillai-Friedman, a psychotherapist who traveled to Washington from Philadelphia with her 17-year-old child, Sanji, and a friend, Pallavi Sreedhar. "We were squeezed, touching."

(March organizers offered a worldwide tally for the 673 "sister" marches, but when asked, could not provide an explanation of how the tally had been calculated.)
_____
Overheard Chant: "Yes we can" as people walked past the White House.

As the sun set downtown, protesters made their way to the White House and assembled in small groups in a park just across from the building's entrance. There in an area surrounded by temporary gates, people walked single file through one open entrance and one by one laid protest signs across gates set up for inauguration several hundred feet away from the White House.

While the temporary gates made walking up to the building impossible, people stood shaking their heads in frustration.

Fontella Garraway, a 50-year-old retired Army veteran who drove three and half hours from her home in Rocky Mount, N.C., sat on a bench staring at the White House with a pin that read "girl power."

"Even looking at the White House, it's like I hope he's looking out here at us," she said of Mr. Trump. "I hope it's penetrating to him that we mean business and we are serious."

Moments later she lay a handwritten sign that read "Love trumps hate; Hear our voice," on the a fence facing the White House.

"That's his inauguration gift," she said.
Yamiche Alcindor _____

Notable Chant: "Tell me what America looks like! This is what America looks like."

Notable Sash: "65,855,610 votes for a woman," worn by Sara Powell, 61, of Phoenix, and nine of her friends.

Overheard: "My arms are tired. This is a good workout," said Rima Borgogni, 50, owner of a Pilates studio in Sedona, Ariz., after holding a sign throughout the mile-long march.

Ellen Ferreira and her friends felt as if they were fighting for some of the same things they used to. They are mostly retired and many of them are veterans of past protests, including the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

"For our right to choose," said Piya Jacob, 70, a retired elementary school principal.

"For equality," said Mary Helsaple, 67, an artist.

"For healing justice," said Gretchen Vorbeck, 72, who runs a nonprofit that buys grocery gift cards for public schoolteachers.

Carol Decker, 70, a retired magazine publisher, jumped in and said, "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore."

Fernanda Santos _____

Notable Chants: "We are the popular vote!"

Notable Shirt: A blue shirt with "Make Sexism Wrong Again" in the same style as "Make America Great Again" campaign shirts.

Just off 15th street, a block north of the parade's official end point, a large flatbed float with big "TRUMP" letters arched along the back parked itself in the middle of the street, drawing the ire of the thousands of marchers, who berated the float with chants of "Shame!" and "We are the popular vote!"

Police officers formed a barricade around the float with more than a half-dozen sidecar motorcycles. The six or so men and one woman on the float all took pictures of the protesters.

Yet some of those who chanted to chase the float away weren't surprised at its appearance at their march.

"I mean the inauguration was yesterday," said Chrissy Fiore, 39, of Washington, though she said it was "crazy that they made it down here and that now they're getting police escorted out."

Officers wouldn't let reporters approach those on the float or those driving it, but a magnet on the side said "Trump Unity Bridge."

As the float headed east to move away from the parade, Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. of Milwaukee County, a Trump supporter, was seen walking along the sidewalk, taking in the scene but remaining silent. He did not respond to a reporter's question about his opinion of the march or protest.

Chant: "Don't take away our ACA" and "Who's the boss? We are!"

Notable Signs: "Show us your taxes;" "you can't comb over sexism;" "1459 days;" and "build a bridge not a wall."

Overheard: One woman speaking at the rally told the story of having an abortion when she was young, making the minimum wage and could not support a child. She said she was fighting for equal pay "not just for white women."

At the rally in Mr. Trump's hometown near Trump World Tower, elected officials and celebrities assailed the president. Signs in the crowd mocked his bouffant hair and the size of his hands. The actress Whoopi Goldberg said it would be the first of many protests against the president.

"This is how people ended the war in Vietnam," Ms. Goldberg told the cheering crowd.

Grace Huezo, 20, a student at Hunter College, marched with her twin sister holding a "Nasty Woman" sign. She said she was there to defend women's rights after she was appalled by Mr. Trump's comments about grabbing women.

"We're here saying, no, people do not have permission to grab women without our permission," she said.

She said she was buoyed by the huge turnout and the camaraderie.

"I'm hopeful to see so many people that are not giving up and they're keeping their spirit," she said. "We're all just going to stick together over the next four years."
Emma G. Fitzsimmons _____
Popular chant: "March! March! March!"

Notable signs: "I won't stop til it rains glass;" "You can't comb over misogyny" (accompanied by a drawing of Mr. Trump's hair); "Flunk the Electoral College."

Overheard: "I got to bring my high school punk rock out," said Emily Hastings, 39, a woman from Denver wearing a black "eat the rich" T-shirt and carrying a "Don't tread on women" sign. "Punk rock is all about resistance."

The march began in a park at the center of the city with a group singing "You've got a friend." Marchers blanketed the park nestled between the gold-domed state capitol and city hall, hauling strollers, wearing pink hats and often hugging and kissing.
Julie Turkewitz _____
Notable Sign: "Make America Compassionate Again," and "I Love You"

Thousands of demonstrators gathered on a drizzly morning clad in rain boots, ponchos and pink knit "pussyhats" to march to the Capitol.

"What Trump has said is so based on exclusion and winning and being right versus taking care of everyone," said Hilary James, 27, a musician from Minneapolis. "Even if he doesn't listen to us, I feel it's important to not sit back."
Christina Capecchi

_____
Notable Sign: Make America Think Again

Gloria Cole, 66, had turned the protest into a family affair, traveling here with her wife, her daughter, her daughter's boyfriend, and her brother and sister-in-law.

"I drew a line, it's like, I'm an old woman - I'm not that old, I'm 66 - I have to stand up for equal rights for everyone, for human rights," Ms. Cole said. "We're here, and we're not going away."

Aili Shaw, 14, held a white sign that read, "Our arms are tired from holding these signs since the 1920s."

Ms. Shaw had traveled here, by train and car, with friends from her home in Coventry, R.I.

"Women don't have the rights they should," she said.
Jess Bidgood _____
Popular Chant: "Thank You." Women were chanting this to the organizers of the march as they kicked off the day's events.

Notable Clothing: At the corner of C and Third Southwest, many women (and some men) were wearing cat-eared "pussyhats" of all shades of pink. Organizers wanted to knit as many as one million hats for this event.

People were also getting creative with the signs they carry. Alan and Alison Lewis drove in from Astoria with their 20-month-old, Grace.

"You shouldn't have to have a relationship to a woman to stand up for women," Mr. Lewis said. "Equality and justice is enough of a reason to be here."
Katie Rogers _____
Who She Is: Jessica Coleman, 56, of Stone Mountain, Ga.

Backstory: A black retired teacher who used to show her daughter documentaries about black history and march with her daughter and church members during Martin Luther King holiday weekends.

"I wanted them to know you can be a smart, intelligent black person. You don't have to sag your pants and follow certain things that became media culture. I wanted them to know that people marched, bled and died for us to be able to vote and be able to go to college and have certain jobs."

"You can really lose your sense of self if you don't know where you've come from and you don't have a vision of where you want to go."

_____

Who She Is: Amber Coleman-Mortley, 34, of Bethesda, Md., is Ms. Coleman's daughter

Backstory: Works at a nonprofit focused on civic education

"On the evening of election night, after saying, 'Hey, I'm going to vote and I'm going to get my friends to vote,' I sat on the sofa bawling trying to figure out what to say to my daughters the next morning because they went to bed certain that Hillary was going to win."

"Marching is my way of putting my money where my mouth is as far as being an active citizen."

"I want my daughters to have agency and have control over their bodies and feel comfortable in the country that they are in so this is my way of saying, 'Hey everybody, I agree with all the people who are out here for different reasons and we don't agree with what is happening right now and we are taking a stand.'"

_____

Who She Is: Garvey Mortley, 8, of Bethesda, Md., is Ms. Coleman's granddaughter

Backstory: Third grader; was named after Marcus Garvey

"I think it's good to share the moment with them and help protest Donald Trump because we want to stand up for our rights because a long time ago, lots of women could not vote. Now we can vote and protest people and stuff."

"If he affects the world in a bad way - like I have lots of friends from different countries and he could make them all move away ... that makes me mad because all the people from the civil rights movement had a hard time trying to put us together. It's like a puzzle, all these people came together, piece by piece, and now Donald Trump is coming over and just breaking those puzzle pieces."

Video

For Amber Coleman-Mortley, the Women's March on Washington was a family affair. Credit Credit... Ben C. Solomon/The New York Times

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Women's March Highlights as Huge Crowds Protest Trump: 'We're Not Going Away' (Published 2017)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hundreds of thousands of women gathered in Washington on Saturday in a kind of counterinauguration after President Trump took office on Friday. A range of speakers and performers cutting across generational lines rallied near the Capitol before marchers made their way toward the White House.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
OK, let's take him." Within seconds two officers grabbed me, each seizing an arm, and shoved me against the drinks machine that rested along the front wall of the McDonald's where I had been eating and working on my report. As I released my clenched hands, my mobile phone and notebook fell to the tiled floor. Then came the sharp sting of the plastic cable tie as it was sealed, pinching tight at the corners of my wrists. I'd never been arrested before, and this wasn't quite how I'd imagined it would go down.

Two days earlier, I'd been sent to Ferguson, Missouri, by the Washington Post, to cover the aftermath of the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old. The fatal gunshots, fired by a white police officer, Darren Wilson, on 9 August 2014, were followed by bursts of anger, in the form of protests and riots. Hundreds, and then thousands, of local residents had flooded the streets. For the Ferguson press corps - which would eventually swell from dozens of reporters for local St Louis outlets into hundreds of journalists from farther afield, including dozens of foreign countries - the McDonald's on West Florissant Avenue became the newsroom.

Because the protests were largely, in those first days, organic and not called by any specific group or set of activists, they were also unpredictable. Some of the demonstrators came to demand an immediate indictment of the officer. Others wanted officials to explain what had happened that day, to tell them who this officer was and why this young man was dead. Scores more stood on pavements and street corners unable to articulate their exact demands - they just knew they wanted justice. Covering Ferguson directly after the killing of Mike Brown involved hours on the streets, with clusters of reporters staked out from the early afternoon into the early hours of the morning. At any point a resident or a group of them could begin a heated argument with the police or a reporter. A demonstration that had for hours consisted of a group of local women standing and chanting on a street corner would suddenly evolve into a chain of bodies blocking traffic, or an impromptu march to the other side of town.

It wasn't much later that the riot-gear-clad officers entered the McDonald's, suggesting we all leave because, with protests still simmering outside, things could get dangerous once the sun went down. Then, when it became clear that we were happy to wait and see how things developed outside, they changed their tune. Now the officers were demanding we leave. When I didn't move fast enough, they grabbed me.

I was led out of the restaurant to wait for transport to police headquarters, with Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post, who had also been arrested. We were driven across town in a police vehicle also containing a local minister, still in her clerical collar, who sang hymns for the entire journey.

The officer who arrested us had told us, smirking, that we'd be spending the night in the cells, but he was wrong. They locked us in a cell, but about half an hour later, we were turned loose. Inundated with phone calls from other reporters and media outlets, police chief Thomas Jackson had given orders for us to be released. By the time we were given back our belongings - unlaced shoes, notebooks, phones - we'd become momentary media celebrities.

I'd arrived in Ferguson thinking I'd be there for just a couple of days. I'd write a feature or two, and then I'd go back to DC and get on with writing about politics. But it became clear that I wasn't escaping Ferguson any time soon.

More than 150 people were taken into custody by the Ferguson and St Louis County police departments in the week-and-a-half that followed Mike Brown's death, the vast majority for "failure to disperse" charges that came as a result of acts of peaceful protest. I was the first journalist to end up in cuffs while covering the unrest.

Resident after resident had told stories of being profiled, of feeling harassed. These protests, they insisted, were not just about Mike Brown. What was clear, from the first day, was that residents of Ferguson, and all who had travelled there to join them, had no trust in, and virtually no relationship with, the police. The police, in turn, seemed to exhibit next to no humanity towards the residents they were charged with protecting.

What happened in Ferguson would give birth to a movement and set the nation on course for an ongoing public hearing on race that stretched far past the killing of unarmed residents - from daily policing to Confederate imagery to respectability politics to cultural appropriation. The social justice movement spawned from Mike Brown's blood would force city after city to grapple with its own fraught histories of race and policing. As protests propelled by tweets and hashtags spread under the banner of Black Lives Matter and with mobile phone and body camera video shining new light on the way police interact with minority communities, America was forced to consider that not everyone marching in the streets could be wrong. Even if you believe Mike Brown's own questionable choices sealed his fate, did Eric Garner, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and Sandra Bland all deserve to die?

Ferguson would mark the arrival on the national stage of a new generation of black political activists - young leaders whose parents and grandparents had been born as recently as the 1970s and 1980s, an era many considered to be post-civil rights. Their parents' parents had been largely focused on winning the opportunity to participate in the political process and gaining access to the protections promised them as citizens. Their parents focused on using the newfound opportunities and safeties provided by the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts to claim seats at the table, with political and activist strategies often focused on registering as many black voters and electing as many black leaders to public office as possible. For at least two decades, the days of taking the struggle to the streets had seemed, to many politically active black Americans, a thing of the past.

The shooting of Mike Brown had happened on a quiet side street, in a spot surrounded by four-storey apartment buildings. As the crowds gathered, others took to windows and porches, looking down at the chaos developing below. Within minutes of the shooting, word spread through the surrounding apartments, and beyond, that Brown's hands were up in the air when he was shot. Darren Wilson had encountered Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson while responding to a call about two young men, matching their description, who had just been involved in the robbery of a nearby off-licence.

People in Ferguson did not know whether Brown was attempting to surrender or attempting to attack Wilson when the officer shot him. They did know that the police in Ferguson looked nothing like them: an almost all-white force charged with serving and protecting a majority black city. They knew all too well about the near-constant traffic tickets they were being given, and how often those tickets turned into warrants. And they knew that Mike Mike (as the family called him), the quiet kid who got his hair cut up the street on West Florissant and who was often seen walking around in this neighbourhood, was dead.

Mike Brown's body remained on the hot August ground - a gruesome, dehumanising spectacle that further traumatised the residents of Canfield Drive and would later be cited by local police officials as among their major mistakes.

The Ferguson and St Louis County police had sent scores of officers, some in full riot gear and tactical vehicles, to deal with the growing crowds and to hold them back as they attempted to investigate the scene of the shooting for themselves. All of this is pretty standard for the scene of a police shooting - police, protesters, angered residents and families - but the scale of the immediate response from both the community and law enforcement signalled that Ferguson would be different.

And then, four-and-a-half hours after the shooting, officers finally removed Brown's body from the asphalt. They did not address the crowds who needed answers after spending most of their Saturday hearing inflammatory rumours.

As the police began to leave, church groups started walking down Canfield Drive, following Brown's mother, Lezley McSpadden, who was crying hysterically, to the spot where his blood stained the ground. When they arrived, the groups circled around McSpadden and her husband and began to pray, sing and hug. Some were older folks from the church up the road, others were younger residents who poured out of the Canfield apartments. What had been a rambunctious crowd had composed itself to create a vigil for a violent death.

But the tranquillity didn't last. As the prayer group began to break up, the residents of Canfield began to yell. Prayer wasn't going to fix this. Neither was singing. The police had to answer for this. Why was Mike Brown dead? Why had his body been left out for so long? And when would we get answers? Amid the shouting, someone lit a skip on fire. While moments earlier prayers were being sent up, now it was the flash of flames floating into the night air.

The following day, the Ferguson police department still hadn't explained what had happened or apologised for keeping Brown's body out on the ground for so long. And church groups were calling for a march in the dead teen's honour. After Sunday services concluded, local pastors and their congregations met at the spot where Brown was killed. Hundreds showed up, and started marching and chanting what they believed to be Michael Brown's own words in his final moments.

"Hands up, don't shoot!"

In city after city, I found officers whose actions were at worst criminal and at best lacked racial sensitivity

The cries rang into the air as the crowd, including many students set to begin school the following week, as well as middle-aged residents of the apartment complex, moved forward. As they hit West Florissant and turned left, they were met by a wall of police officers. What had begun as a peaceful march became a heated standoff, blocking traffic in both directions. The crowd continued shouting at the officers, who were shouting back. And as the church groups began to leave, young men emerged who seemed angrier and more determined to extract revenge for Mike Brown's death.

That night, armed vandals took advantage of raging protests to break into the QuikTrip petrol station just a block away from where Brown was killed, grabbing bags of crisps and sodas, cigarettes and lighters, as others ripped the ATM machine from the wall. Before long, the store was ablaze.

Photos and videos from the day of Brown's death had gone viral, but it was the destruction of the QuikTrip, not the police shooting of Mike Brown, that brought the national media's focus to Ferguson. Unrest had now become a riot. Yet another police shooting in a working-class black neighbourhood, even the breaking of a young black body left on public display, didn't catch the attention of the national media. It was the community's enraged response - broken windows and shattered storefronts - that drew the eyes of the nation.

By the time a grand jury concluded on 24 November 2014 that there was not enough evidence to charge Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson with a crime in the killing of Mike Brown, I had been in that city for the better part of three months. I would spend the next eight months crisscrossing the country, visiting city after city to report on and understand the social movement that vowed to awaken a sleeping nation and insisted it begin to truly value black life. Each day, it seemed, there was another shooting. In city after city, I found officers whose actions were at worst criminal and at best lacked racial sensitivity, and black and brown bodies disproportionately gunned down by those sworn to serve and protect.

Meanwhile, the protests had created a countermovement of scepticism, anger and hate, driven by some who genuinely believed that the coverage of Ferguson was overblown and amplified by others with more sinister motivations. These legions of sceptics insisted that the entire story was a fraud, that Mike Brown had deserved his fate, and that tensions in Ferguson were completely stoked by the media - based not on historical injustice, but on real-time race-baiting. The photos and videos that we had posted from the protests had unnecessarily fanned the flames, these critics insisted. And by demanding answers of the Ferguson police department, by wanting to know why this young man had died, the critics declared, we were now responsible for the social unrest in the streets.

On the afternoon of 22 November 2014, two days before the grand jury's decision not to prosecute the officer who shot Michael Brown, Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann and his partner, officer Frank Garmback, responded to a call about a man with a gun outside a recreation centre. The man who called the police told the dispatcher that the person was possibly a child playing with a toy, information that was never given to Loehmann and Garmback. The officers believed they were responding to an active shooter.

Loehmann and Garmback pulled up in their cruiser next to a park gazebo where for the last hour 12-year-old Tamir Rice had been throwing snowballs and pretending to fire the toy weapon. Their cruiser slid on the snow-covered grass as Loehmann leaped out from the passenger-side door.

Loehmann claimed he yelled for the boy to show his hands, but that instead of complying, the boy lifted his shirt and reached into his waistband. Loehmann said that when he saw Tamir's elbow moving upwards and the weapon coming up out of his pants, he fired two shots. Video of the shooting showed that less than two seconds passed after the officers arrived before one of them shot Tamir dead.

Less than two seconds passed after the officers arrived before one of them shot Tamir Rice dead

"At its core, Tamir's death is a tale of stunning systemic police incompetence and indifference," wrote Phillip Morris, the sole black metro columnist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It had been revealed that Cleveland police had hired Loehmann, the officer who shot Rice, without checking his references or running a serious background check. Had the city done that, they would have uncovered job reviews from his former supervisor which made it clear he would not recommend that Loehmann, the son of a police officer, be given a badge and a gun.

A few weeks later, I flew to Cleveland, and made it just in time to see the last of about 200 protesters storm into Cleveland city hall, their signs and T-shirts declaring JUSTICE FOR TAMIR as they marched up to the council chambers for the body's final meeting of the year.

That night there was a stinging winter breeze blowing off Lake Erie and drifting through a largely empty downtown Cleveland. Typically, this section of the city would be quiet at this time of night, just after dinner on a weekday, with city employees gone from the public buildings - courthouse, administrative offices, city hall - that line these blocks. But on this night, there was a strong, steady sound of dissent.

"This is a movement, not a moment," declared Lorenzo Norris, a local pastor, as he led the racially diverse if largely young group of protesters into the council chambers. The Cleveland protesters were incensed by a recent federal review that had concluded that their police officers regularly exerted excessive force during routine interactions and pulled their guns (and their triggers) inappropriately.

That investigation had been sparked by another shooting in November 2012, during which Cleveland police officers opened fire on a car that had led them on a chase, discharging 137 bullets into the vehicle, only to later discover that both of those killed had been unarmed. Like their protest brethren in Ferguson, the Clevelanders contended that local elected officials hadn't done enough. "We want change," Norris told me as I caught up with the group. "We must have change."

After the protest, I drove over to see my old friend Colin. We weren't exactly surprised by Tamir Rice's death. We knew the Cleveland police weren't known for their rigour or calculated decision-making - in fact, in the last decade, the Department of Justice had issued not just one but two sets of findings that concluded the department routinely violated the civil rights of the city's residents. As young black men from the suburbs riding through the city in cars a little too nice to have either of us behind the wheel, we'd had our fair share of colourful interactions with Cleveland's finest.

At some point in high school, my best friends and I all had a running joke about "the talk", which most of them had been given by a father or mother or some other relative. The underlying theme of this set of warnings passed down from black parents to their children is one of self-awareness: the people you encounter, especially the police, are probably willing to break your body, if only because they subconsciously view you not only as less than, but also as a threat.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Protesters against police shootings march in New York, July 2016. Photograph: Press/Sipa/Rex/Shutterstock

Find almost any high school-age black male and ask him about "the talk". Neither of my parents ever really gave it to me, but I heard "the talk" secondhand from the mothers of a few friends. Besides, when you grow up in a mixed-race home - my mother is white, my father black - no one has to tell you that one half of your family looks different than the other and that you need to pay attention. Close attention.

Say "yes sir" or "yes ma'am" to any officer you encounter. If you get pulled over, keep your hands on the wheel. As we drove around in Colin's car listening to Cleveland rap, we'd keep our wallets in the centre console. That way, we wouldn't have to reach into our pockets. Above all, we knew to never, ever run in the presence of a police officer. That's just asking for trouble.

While "the movement" was born in Ferguson in the summer of 2014, it had been conceived in the hearts and minds of young black Americans at different points in the preceding years. One of these moments came in July 2013 with the Florida jury's decision to find George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watchman who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, not guilty.

That year was a major awakening point not just for me but also for other young black men and women across the country. Each story of a police shooting solidified the undeniable feeling in our hearts that their deaths and those of other young black men were not isolated. Peaceful black America was awakened by the Zimmerman verdict, which reminded them anew that their lives and their bodies could be abused and destroyed without consequence. Trayvon's death epitomised the truth that the system black Americans had been told to trust was never structured to deliver justice to them. The "not guilty" verdict prompted the creation of a round of boisterous and determined protest groups, initially Florida-based, although they would eventually expand nationally.

Across the country, at a time when Twitter had yet to become the primary platform for news consumption, a 31-year-old activist in Oakland named Alicia Garza penned a Facebook status that soon went viral. She called the status "a love letter to black people".

"The sad part is, there's a section of America who is cheering and celebrating right now. and that makes me sick to my stomach. We GOTTA get it together y'all," she wrote, "stop saying we are not surprised. that's a damn shame in itself. I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter. And I will continue that. stop giving up on black life.
"Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter," she concluded.

Her friend and fellow activist Patrisse Cullors found poetry in the post, extracting the phrase "black lives matter" and reposting the status. Soon the two women reached out to a third activist, Opal Tometi, who set up Tumblr and Twitter accounts under the slogan.

"Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise," Garza wrote in the group's official history of its founding. "It is an affirmation of Black folks' contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression."

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Activist Alicia Garza, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter. Photograph: Kristin Little Photography

While the phrase is now the name of an organisation and is often used to describe the broader protest and social justice movement, Black Lives Matter is best thought of as an ideology. Its tenets have matured and expanded over time, and not all of its adherents subscribe to them in exactly the same manner - much the way an Episcopalian and a Baptist, or a religious conservative and a deficit hawk, could both be described as a Christian or a conservative, yet still hold disagreements over policy, tactics and lifestyle. For the young black men and women entering the adult world during the Obama presidency, the ideology of Black Lives Matter, not yet an organisation nor a movement, carried substance, even heft. It was a message that resonated with the young black men and women who had been so outraged and pained by the Zimmerman verdict. And the decision by Tometi to focus on Twitter and Tumblr, then second-tier social media outlets, instead of Facebook, proved a stroke of strategic genius.

Both networks allow for more organic, democratic growth. Unlike Facebook, in which virality is determined by algorithms, visibility on Twitter and Tumblr is determined directly by how compelling a given message, post, or dispatch is. A phrase like #blacklivesmatter, or #ferguson, or, later on, #BaltimoreUprising, can in a matter of moments transform from a singular sentence typed on an individual user's iPhone into an internationally trending topic. #blacklivesmatter didn't catch on immediately, but its time would soon come.

As writer and historian Jelani Cobb wrote in the New Yorker, in what remains one of the definitive profiles of the creation of the organisation: "Black Lives Matter didn't reach a wider public until the following summer, when a police officer named Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson. Darnell Moore, a writer and an activist based in Brooklyn, who knew Patrice Cullors, coordinated 'freedom rides' to Missouri from New York, Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Boston. Within a few weeks of Brown's death, hundreds of people who had never participated in organised protests took to the streets, and that campaign eventually exposed Ferguson as a case study of structural racism in America and a metaphor for all that had gone wrong since the end of the civil-rights movement."

As of March 2016, the 10th anniversary of Twitter, the hashtag #blacklivesmatter had been used more than 12m times - the third most of any hashtag related to a social cause. At the top of the list, however, sits #ferguson, the most-used hashtag promoting a social cause in the history of Twitter, tweeted more than 27m times.

The Movement for Black Lives - as activists had begun calling the protest movement - and the national push for police reform, had faded from the national consciousness during the first months of 2016. There were bursts of attention, but in each instance Americans' focus on race and justice landed like another strong wave, only to recede right back into the ocean. Six months into 2016, my colleagues and I were working on an analysis of the number of Americans killed to date, and had discovered that even after more than a year of protests and outrage, police nationwide were on track to take more lives in 2016 than they had in 2015. Yet none of the men and women killed by police in 2016 had received the same level of attention from the media or had galvanised activists as much as those killed just months earlier.

For racial justice activists, the presidential election was an opportunity to pressure candidates to adopt positions on policing and criminal justice reform, as well as to speak out on other issues of racial disparity.

"People know that the police are still killing people. What we've got to figure out now is what a victory looks like," Kayla Reed, the Ferguson protester still working for the Organization for Black Struggle in St Louis, told me in early 2016. "There isn't going to be a single bill passed that will suddenly encompass all of the ways the system marginalises black and brown people. We have to redo the whole damn thing."

Many of the young activists who had been driven into the street by the police killings of 2014 and 2015 had begun to move away from daily protesting and organising work. Robust conversations circulated about viral videos of the deaths of individuals and the fetishising of black death. Perhaps, some argued, not every video needed to be shared and played on a constant loop.

In early July 2016, two killings reawakened the movement. Videos circulated on social media of the police shootings of two young men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Among the cities that hosted major protests was Dallas, where the police had gone to great pains to support the protesters, cordoning off areas for demonstrators and posing for photos next to signs calling for reforms and justice. It was here that a single gunman attacked white officers in what he later told police negotiators was a targeted retribution for the police killings of black men.

As the list of names grew, so did the urgency of the uprising that would become a movement

A week later, another lone wolf attacked officers in Baton Rouge, killing three. The deaths and injury of the officers in these two cities again shook the nation, underscoring with renewed urgency the depth of the anger and distrust towards police still coursing through America.

The attacks on police officers enraged the law enforcement community. In a country with millions of easily accessible guns and an increasing national distrust of institutions - specifically the police - it wasn't hard to imagine the ease with which someone determined to harm officers could carry out such an attack. "With the number of police shootings that have occurred that seem to be totally unjustified, somewhere in this country, someone was going to do such a thing," John Creuzot, a former prosecutor and judge in Dallas, told me after the shooting.

After the Dallas attack, Barack Obama convened a 33-person conference at the White House, a conversation that ran for four-and-a-half hours - among the longest single-subject conferences of his presidency. The attendees were a mix - young activists such as DeRay Mckesson, civil rights stalwarts such as Al Sharpton, police chiefs and heads of several major police unions, and government officials including the attorney general, Loretta Lynch.

As he facilitated the conversation, Obama often glanced to his left, at Brittany Packnett, a 31-year-old Ferguson protester and co-founder of Campaign Zero - a policy-oriented activist arm that pledged to put forth recommendations for how "we can live in a world where the police don't kill people". This was at least the third time Packnett had met Obama, who after one meeting had been so struck by her command of the room that he pulled her aside to encourage her to one day run for office. She had applied for and was accepted to a spot on the Ferguson Commission, the taskforce convened by Missouri governor Jay Nixon after the unrest in 2014. Next, Obama invited Packnett to join his president's taskforce on 21st-century policing.

I asked what had brought her from the barricades into the policy making rooms - by now, Packnett had joined street protests in more than half a dozen cities.

"Everyone has a role," Packnett said. "There are some people who need to be the revolutionary, and there are some people who need to be at the table in the White House. And I knew it was my job to translate the pain I had seen and experienced in the streets and bring it into these halls of power."

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

A protest on West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, Missouri. Photograph: Michael B Thomas/AFP/Getty Images

Packnett explains the protest movement as a series of escalating waves. Its conception came from the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, which mobilised black Americans in a demand for justice. Its grand birth, first in Ferguson and then throughout the nation in the autumn of 2014, was prompted by the deaths of Eric Garner, John Crawford and Michael Brown, the cases that showed justice for those killed by the police was not forthcoming. As the list of names grew, so did the urgency of the uprising that would become a movement. 2015 brought a third wave of anger and pain: Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Samuel DuBose - another round of death in which the pleas for police accountability became demands. As Obama prepares to leave the White House, it remains to be seen whether the movement birthed by the broken promise of his presidency will live on through the season of his successor.

"The protests will continue," Packnett said confidently when I called her from Cleveland on the first night of the Republican national convention in July. "We're going to work to continue this level of engagement with the next administration; there's just too much at stake." While the targeted killings of the officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge prompted some commentators to declare the movement dead, the activists have not gone quietly.

A few days later came the non-fatal shooting in North Miami of behavioural therapist Charles Kinsey. Kinsey was lying on the ground with his hands in the air, begging not to be shot as he tried to soothe his autistic patient, when an officer fired his gun three times. "I was thinking as long as I have my hands up ... they're not going to shoot me," Kinsey told a local television station from his hospital bed. "Wow, was I wrong."

In the days after the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, thousands of people used an online tool provided by Campaign Zero to petition their local elected officials to demand police reform. In mid-July, as the political media gathered in Cleveland for the GOP convention, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in more than 30 cities.

"We have no choice but to keep going," Packnett told me. "If one of the central demands of the movement is to stop killing us, and they're still killing us, then we don't get to stop, either."
They Can't Kill Us All by Wesley Lowery (Penguin, £9.99). To order a copy for £8.49, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.
* Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black Lives Matter: birth of a movement | Wesley Lowery

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
OK, let's take him." Within seconds two officers grabbed me, each seizing an arm, and shoved me against the drinks machine that rested along the front wall of the McDonald's where I had been eating and working on my report. As I released my clenched hands, my mobile phone and notebook fell to the tiled floor.