This week’s episode: United, we’re not

Where does America go from here? This election has illuminated deep cultural fissures across the United States – and the world. We are a nation in crisis, fighting each other in the middle of a pandemic and a bitter debate over the movement for Black lives. This week on the show, we talk with an asylum-seeking family, Georgia women on abortion and West Virginians on the impact of Black Lives Matter.

The United States is in the midst of another COVID-19 spike, possibly the deadliest the country has seen so far. Over the past week, there has been an average of roughly 150,000 new cases reported each day. On this week’s episode of Reveal, reporters Jennifer Gollan and Michael Montgomery produced an interview with Allison Wynes, a nurse pulling long ICU shifts at the University of Iowa Hospital in Iowa City. She spoke about her experiences working on the ground during the ninth month of the pandemic. While big cities have their own problems dealing with the spread of COVID-19, hospitals in rural areas face financial crises and University of Iowa Hospital leaders warn that they are facing possible bed and staffing shortages. The story illuminates how the lack of a national plan to stop the virus has created an immense burden for health care workers. 

What were you looking for when you thought about how to report on this COVID-19 spike? 

Jennifer Gollan: Michael and I both know that the pandemic is the biggest story of our time. In the closing days of the election campaign, we also knew that the candidates diverged drastically as far as how they were going to approach battling this surge that we're now seeing. Meanwhile, (President Donald) Trump was hopscotching across the U.S. in these hot-spot states. We decided to highlight that fact and then find someone who is dealing with this every day, a nurse in Iowa, and talk about how she's seeing the surge of patients.

Michael Montgomery: Something had stuck in my mind from the first presidential debate back in September: Donald Trump said that there would be a vaccine within weeks. It didn't seem to get a lot of attention, but that's a big deal. That's a big promise to make at a debate. We went through every speech of his during the last week of the campaign to see what he said about the surge in the virus. And he said almost nothing.

What stood out to you as different about interviewing a nurse now compared to the beginning of the pandemic?

Jennifer: What was so poignant for me is to hear Allison say how health care workers had been front and center in everyone's mind as essential workers battling this virus but now that she felt forgotten. 

Michael: To have an ICU nurse who's in the middle of a major surge in the pandemic say that they feel forgotten, that was incredibly striking. The other thing that I found striking is that she said it was symptomatic of something else, which is that our president has not pulled the nation together in a way that you might anticipate with a country facing one of its worst crises in modern history. I think that the neglect that she feels is connected to the sense that there isn't a sense of national mission, there isn't a sense that we're all in this together. 

Why did it feel important to you to talk to somebody in Iowa specifically? 

Michael: We really wanted to talk to someone who was in a state where the virus is surging and in a state that voted for Trump. So we were thinking about North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa, which currently have the three biggest spikes in terms of COVID-19 in the country. 

Jennifer: In a state like Iowa, we are seeing the manifestation of not having a national policy of putting science first, of not having a unified, national-level voice coordinating approaches to battling the virus. Allison is one person, one health care worker, dealing with the consequences of that. We're seeing 1,000 people or more die every day. I think it's easy to become inured to those numbers; they become abstract.

It’s really a challenge to report on the pandemic in a way that keeps people from getting numb. How do you try to report on this in a way to make it feel crucial?

Michael: I think what made it really feel relevant, even though we're almost at the end of a year of pandemic, is the fact that the president of the United States seems to be ignoring the crisis. . He was talking every day at multiple rallies, he was in states that were going through this surge, and he literally was not talking about it. 

Listen to the episode: United, we’re not
 

In the Field 

Chris Jones is no stranger to danger. Before he became a journalist reporting on domestic extremism for community-based news outlet 100 Days in Appalachia, he covered the war in Afghanistan for five years after having served there as a Marine. While he was sweating through his uniform in the Helmand Province, Chris often dreamed of the cool woods of Appalachia. So the first thing he did upon his discharge from military service was hike the 2,190-mile-long Appalachian Trail, and after a few years bouncing between Brooklyn and Kabul, he finally moved to the rolling hills of West Virginia. “I’m not from here, but I'd like to see someone make me leave,” he jokes. 

For Reveal’s episode this week, Chris reported on a small Black Lives Matter march in Kingwood, West Virginia, which became the target of heavily armed counterprotesters – including one with a swastika tattoo – who shouted racial slurs and threatened the marchers.   

“It was a very, very, very tense day,” he says. “I've been around a lot of guns. I've worked as a journalist around a lot of guys with guns, and I've been around firefights. And that day scared the shit out of me. There were so many firearms in one place, so much anger behind them, and you could just tell that nobody really knew what they were doing.”

Luckily, the protest ended peacefully. For Chris, it was important to report the story, despite the danger, to document how extremism is present in rural America. While right-wing domestic terrorists have been responsible for 145 murders across the country in the past three years, Chris says media coverage often overlooks or misrepresents violence in rural communities. “On a national level, the thing that's been focused is when militia guys show up in cities, like Portland. There is very, very little reporting about rural extremism. … People behave very differently when they think cameras aren’t there.” 

Chris didn’t want his reporting for Reveal to be another example of a story that reiterates stereotypes about Appalachia, but instead illuminates the complexities of political activism in rural towns. “I don't want anybody to take away from the story that West Virginians are racist. There are racists all over the country,” Chris says. He focused on local people who decided to march in support of Black Lives Matter, even while knowing there could be a risk of deadly confrontation. “Was it scary? Yes. Was it dangerous? Yes. Were there way more people who hated them than approved of them? Yes. But they still did it.” 

Listen to the episode: United, we’re not
 

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Noor Hindi is a 2020-21 Reveal Investigative Fellow. She’s the equity and inclusion reporter at community-owned news magazine The Devil Strip in Akron, Ohio, and is reporting on housing policies in Akron during her fellowship at Reveal. 

Listening: I've been a longtime fan of Sylvan Esso, and I've been addicted to her newest album, “Free Love.” Her music is upbeat and easy to listen to. 

Reading: I'm currently reading “The Empathy Exams,” a collection of essays by Leslie Jamison. The essays are short and grounding, exploring all the ways we care (and don't care) for each other. 

Watching: Like the pandemic, “Grey's Anatomy” never ends. That's been my go-to over the last few months.

You can follow Noor’s work on Twitter: @MyNrhindi. 

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